
A STUDY 




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THE 

BURIED NATIONS 

OF THE INFANT DEAD 



A STUDY IN ESCHATOLOQY 



By Rev. nffif PRATT 



▲T7TSOS 01* THB *' MODEHIT VbRSIOX " OP* THE BlBI<S] IIT 

Spastss, awd of Sevbral Commextasies, in- 

Sfaistsh A29^d EireiiisH, ox tse Books 

OF Tan OiiD Tbstambxt 



hackensach:. n. j. 
B. G. PRATT COMPANY 
1911 
JPrice^ 75 cents I'ostpaid 









COPYRIGHT 1911 
BY H. B. PRATT 



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©Ci.A295016 



TO Thk Memory oi^ my south ami^rican daughters, 

JUANITA, 

WHO I^KFT US IN PRECIOUS BABYHOOD, AND 

MARfA, 

WHO WAS **CARRIED AWAY BY THE ANGEIyS/* 

IN THE BRIGHT PROMISE OF HER EARI^Y WOMANHOOD, 

I DEDICATE THIS I,ITTI,E VOI.UME, 

IN THE ASSURED HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 

AND **THE I.IFE THAT IS I.IFE INDEED.'* 

H,B,P. 



Some Topics Specially Handled. 

PACK 

1 The Purpose of Redemption — God's Original 

Purpose 4 

2 Calvin and Dying Infants 15 

3 ** Elect Infants Dying in Infancy*' 16 

4 The Kingdom 21 

5 Infants and the Kingdom 23 

6 The Personnel of the Kingdom 26 

7 The Buried Nations of the Infant Dead 34 

8 '* The Millennium '* 36 

9 Christ's Purposed Pendency of the Second Advent 

8, 9, 72-75 

10 Relative Numbers of the Infant Dead 45 

11 In What Form Will They Come Back ? 47 

12 Ministry of Angels 20, 46, 51, 69 

13 Is There, or Was There Ever, a Place of Deten- 

tion (a ** Prison *') for the Sainted Dead? 57 

14 * * Preaching to the Spirits in Prison " 59 

15 Deductions 65 

16 Has God Any Special Purpose in View for These 

lyittle Ones, So Dear to Him, and Whose Very 

Guardian Angels Stand So High in Heaven ? . . 71 

17 Footnote on Russellism 76 

18 The 1000-Years' Binding of Satan, Rev. 20 : 1-10 80 
11 What Will God Do with the Nations of the Infant 

Dead ? 85 

20 Restoration for Sodom as Well as for Jerusalam 98 

21 Conclusions 106 

22 Ivuther and Calvin on the Resurrection and the 

Life Everlasting 110 (footnote) , 136-138 

23 • * The Twelve Tribes of Israel " 116-220 

24 Definite Results of Our Investigation 128 

25 Appendix. Facts and Statistics on the Infant 

Dead 146 

26 Infanticide and Foundling Hospitals 151 



PREFACE. 

The author, a graduate of Princeton Theological 
Seminary, class of 1855, has for the most of his long 
ministerial life been closely identified with the work 
of Spanish Evangelization. But being a man "un- 
known to fame," having never cared to accept hon- 
orary degrees, which seem to impugn the doctrine 
of the parity of the Christian Ministry, it occurs to 
him that treating of so unaccustomed a theme as 
*'The Buried Nations of the Infant Bead" it is due to 
his readers, as well as to himself, to preface the 
same with a more or less complete list of his former 
publications (other than newspaper articles), in or- 
der to give them the assurance beforehand that they 
are not following the guidance of a novice in these 
special studies, or the ill-balanced speculations of one 
who intrudes rashly into the realm of "things un- 
seen" as yet. 

Fifty or sixty years ago, the Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, 
in his ''History of the Apostolic Church,'' said that 
different great departments of the Christian revela- 
tion have occupied successively the attention of the 
Church in the lapse of the ages, and that the sub- 
ject of EccJesiology was at that time uppermost in 
the realm of religious thought, and when that was 
disposed of, then Eschatology — or the science of ''the 
last things'' — ^would follow in due course, as the final 
one of the great problems of Christian doctrine call- 
ing for satisfactory solution. I cite from memory, 
my own copy of his book having been misplaced dur- 
ing the many changes of my life. 

But whether we will or not, that great and most 
important branch of Biblical knowledge as in our 



11 PREFACE. 



day forcing itself on our attention as never before; 
and the dozen or more theories of "the Millennium," 
and of the Second Advent (some sober, some wild, 
and some dangerous) that are gaining adherents in our 
day, will serve me as excuse, if excuse be needed, foi* 
Bubmitting to the consideration of the Christian pub- 
lic, and committing to the blessing of God, this hum- 
ble attempt to advance the cause of Gospel Truth, in 
reference to what is at this present the most impor- 
tant, perhaps, and least understood of the great de- 
partments of Bible doctrine, which our Lord made 
pre-eminent in his own teaching, and which from the 
beginning he has given in charge to the studious, 
and prayerful, and ceaseless attention of his people. 

As the subject is new to most people, being, for 
one reason or another, avoided by the general pulpit, 
and barely touched upon in what is called ^'practical 
religion'' in our day (though on the lips of our Lord 
and his apostles all the time), if the reader will 
honor my booklet with a second reading, in order to 
grasp the subject well, I am sure he will find it a 
study of the most intense interest, and of the highest 
practical value. 

The subject ought to interest everyone, as there are 
few homes that have not buried their infant dead. 
The book embraces the studies of a lifetime, and will 
afford the reader scope for profitable meditation along 
new lines of "orthodox" belief; even though he may not 
be able either to accept at once all the author's posi- 
tions, or to refute them, buttressed as they are at 
every step by the sure word of God, concerning things 
past, present and future — while avoiding carefully the 
details of unfulfilled prophecy. 

With these explanations, and fully conscious of the 
many imperfections of the work, I commit this 8tudu 



PREFACE. Ill 



in Eschatology to the good hand of God, and to the 
indulgent consideration and criticism of my brethren. 

H. B. PRATT. 
Hackensack, N. J., September 13, 1910. 



author's previous publications. 

1. **The Right of the People to the Word of Godr 
Bogota, Colombia, S. A. 1856. Spanish. 

2. '*The St. Peter Question,'' Bogota, Colombia, S. A 
1857. Spanish. 

3. **Noches con los Romanistas.'* Spanish transla* 
tion of Seymour's "Evenings with the Romanists," 
with Translator's Appendix on the St. Peter Question. 
New York, 1860. Over 10,000 copies printed. 

Three editions also printed in Madrid, Spain. Some- 
what abridged. 

4. Partial Revision of the old ReinorValera Bille. 
1860, 1861. 

5. "Death, the Resurrection, and the Intermediate 
State" Southern Presbyterian Review. 1866. 

6. "The Hope of the GospeV Southern Presbyterian 
Review. 1867. 

7. "A Defense of Prestyterian Baptism^ Presbyterian 
Committee of Publication. Richmond, Virginia. 1869. 

8. *'El Lugar que ocupan las Sagradas Escrituras en 
la Iglesia Romana:' Correspondence with Dr. Moists 
Higuera, curate of Socorro, Columbia, S. A. 1874. 

9. ''La Biblia y la Adoracion de la Hostia^ Socorro. 
1874. 

10. "La Bihlia y sus Opositores.'' Reply to Booklet 
of Sr. Jose M. Groot, Editor of "El Catolicismo." Bo- 
gota. 1875. 



IV PREFACE, 



11. **La Prensa Evang6lica:' Monthly publication for 
gratuitous distribution. Bucaramanga. 1876, 1877. 

12. "El Libro de Jos Salmos.'' Radical revision of the 
Reina-Valera Psalms, to serve only as a basis for a 
more perfect Spanish Version. Bucaramanga. 1875. 

Reprinted in New York, 1879. Reprinted in Ma- 
drid, Spain, 1882 (?). Reprinted in Barcelona, 
Spain. 1883. 

13. "El Evangelio de San Mateo.''^ Radical revision 
of Reina-Valera New Testament; to serve only as a 
basis for a more perfect Spanish Version. Interrupted 
by the Revolution of 1876. Bucaramanga. 1877. 

14. *'The Righteousness of God to le Universally Con- 
fessed.'' Sermon preached before the Synod of South 
Carolina, on Rom. 3 : 19. Published by request in South- 
ern Presbyterian Review. 1880. 

15. "Studies on the Second Advent'' First Series. 
1880. 

16. ''Studies on the Second Advent'' Second Series. 
1881. 

17. "The Liberty of Praising God'* in Hymns as 
well as Psalms. A review of Claybaugh*s "Ordinance 
of Praise." 1881. Presbyterian Committee of Publi- 
cation, Richmond, Virginia. 

18. 'New Translation of the Bible into Spanish; "La 
Version Moderna.'' The first Spanish translation of 
the Bible ever made from the original tongues. 1883 — 
1893. American Bible Society, New York. 1893. 

19. An Idiomatic Translation of the Book of Genesis 
from the original Hebrew into Spanish. American 
Bible Society. 1886. 

20. Torrey's "How to Bring Men to Christ" Span- 
ish Translation. Mexico. 1889. 



PREFACE. 



21. "The Length of the Sojourn in Egypt.'' Southern 
Presbyterian Review. 1889. 

22. **The World Viewed as the Subject of Ruin and 
Redemption.'' Southern Presbyterian Review. 1895. 

23. ''Estudios sohre el Libro del Genesis." Pp. 510. 
1903. 

24. *'Estudios sohre el Libro del Exodo." Pp. 450. 
1905. 

25. ''Estudios sotre el Libro del Levitico." Pp. 420. 
1910. 

The first and only Protestant commentaries on books 
of the Old Testament ever published in Spanish. 

These three works were turned over to the Amer- 
ican Tract Society, in trust and perpetuity, as 
the author's personal contribution to the cause 
of Spanish Evangelization; providing for their 
permanent sale at the uniform price of 50 cents 
gold, postpaid, within the limits of the Postal 
Union. 

26. "Studies on the Book of Genesis'* Translated 
from the Spanish. 1906. 

27. **El Catecismo Menor.'* New Translation. La- 
redo, Texas. 1899. 

28. **El Libro de Orden Eclesidstico.'' Laredo, Texas. 
1899. 

29. Vest-pocket edition of ''Los ProverMos." Revision 
of La Moderna, for the Mexican Centennial. American 
Bible Society. 1910. 



THE BURIED IVATIOIVS 

OF THE 

INFANT DEAD. 

A STUDY IN ESCHATOLOGY. 

If our first parents had maintained that origi- 
nal condition of ^^ righteousness and true hoU- 
ness " in which they were created ; if sin and 
death had never invaded the world, and man had 
fulfilled the first recorded command given to an 
unf alien and happy race : *' Be fruitful and mul- 
tiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it" 
(Gen. 1 : 28), in a comparatively short time there 
would have been no space left for them to multi- 
ply and increase in. Even in a world of sin and 
misery, of sorrow, disease and death, it has been 
often found that under favorable circumstances, 
and with abundance of wholesome food, a healthy 
and vigorous stock will double itself every 25 
years. It is therefore a most reasonable propo- 
sition that the unfallen race of Adam and Eve, 
free from disease, want and death, industrious, 
frugal, continent, pure and holy, loving God 
supremely, and each his neighbor as himself, 
would have doubled itself four times over in the 



THE BURIED NATIONS 



course of every hundred years, and would have 
continued indefinitely to do the same. Anybody 
with pencil and paper before him can easily make 
the calculation of this endless progression. 

The two in 25 years would make four ; in 50, 
eight; in 75, sixteen; and in 100, thirty-two. 
In 200 years the race at the same rate of pro- 
gression would number 512 ; in 300 years, 8,192 ; 
in 400 years, 131,072; in 500 years, 2,097,192; 
in 600 years, 33,555,072 ; in 700 years, 496,881,- 
112 ; in 800 years, 3,975,049,215, or more than 
two and a half times the present population of 
our world, estimated at 1,500 millions ; in 900 
years, 63,600,198,456 ; and in 1,000 years, 1,017,- 
612,767,296— enough to people more than 600 
worlds like our own I At the same rate of arith- 
metical progression, in 1,500 years, or at the date 
of Noah's Flood, that single pair of unf alien 
human beings would have reached the inconceiv- 
able figure of 900 quadrillions, more than suflS- 
cient to people GOOfiOO worlds like ours! We 
ask ourselves in wonderment where it would have 
pleased God to arrest this rate of increase, and 
revoke that first command of his. Some one 
will perhaps here say that before many ages had 
elapsed he would have found himself in the 
necessity of changing his 'plan. That might well 
be said of some supposed **holy Jupiter," who 



OF THE INFANT DEAD, 



moves down the stream of time along with the 
rest of us, and amends his purposes, and alters 
his plans, as each new emergency may require ; 
but it is a simple absurdity when speaking of 
" the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eter- 
nity,^^ who lives abreast of all its endless ageSj 
— fills it up with his changeless being, as he 
does all space with his measureless immensity. 
" Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord." 
Jer. 23, 24. No supposed change of plan could 
ever apply to the case of him to whom the end 
is not merely foreseen, but is ever as present as 
the beginning, and to whom our creature dis- 
tinctions of past, present and future do not exist ; 
so that the creation of man, together with his sin 
and fall, and the redemptive work of Christ, from 
start to finish, were from the beginning as pres- 
ent and immediate to him as they were ever 
going to be. The Fall, therefore, with all its 
attendant and resultant consequences, entered 
essentially into the plan and purpose of the crea- 
tion and redemption of the fallen race, ruined in 
Adam, but redeemed and restored in Christ, the 
second Adam. 

The heaven, even the heavens are the 
Lord^Sj 

BUT THE EARTH HATH HE GIVEN UNTO 
THE CHILDREN OF MEN." Ps. 115 I 16. 



(( 



THE BURIED NATIONS 



'^ God himself who formed the earth and 
made it, he hath estabhshed it ; 
he created it not in vain, he formed it to 
be inhabited." Isa. 45 : 18. 

The Purpose of Redemption— God's 
Original Purpose. 

As therefore the over-population of the world 
formed no part of his purpose and plan, he 
made provision (while working out the problem 
of the exceeding sinfulness and malignity of sin, 
and the glories of his own redeeming grace), to 
people it permanently with a nobler race than 
ever Adam's was or could have been, *^m order 
that in the ages to come he might make known 
unto the principalities and powers in the heav- 
enly places the exceeding greatness of his grace^ 
in his kindness toward us in Christ JesusJ^ 
Eph. 2 : 7. Jesus said to the unbelieving Saddu- 
cees: **The children of this world [or age] 
marry and are given in marriage ; but they that 
shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world 
[or age] and the resurrection prom the 
DEAD, neither marry nor are given in marriage ; 
for neither can they die any more (R. V.) [re- 
production therefore will be no longer necessary 
to its population]; for they are equal unto the 
angels [Matthew and Mark say " they are as the 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 



angels in heaven,^^ and therefore non-productive] 
and are the children of Gody being the children 
of the resurrection.^^ Luke 20:34-36. A per- 
fected, sinless, deathless and non-productive race, 
complete in numbers, to be neither increased nor 
diminished, who should be " io the praise of the 
ghry of his grace^^^ was from the beginning the 
ultimate end of man's creation. And thus we 
read eight times over of the " Book of Life," the 
" Lamb's Book of Life," and the " Book of Life 
in which the names were written from the founda- 
tion of the world ^^ (Rev. 17:8); so that this 
purpose (as Luke 20 : 36 states it) will only, and 
can only be accomplished when we are really and 
fully " the children of God, being the children of 
the resurrection^^; and thus Paul also states it 
in reference to himself, as his highest aspiration 
(both then on earth, and now in heaven) to be 

WAITING FOR THE ADOPTION, TO WIT, THE RE- 
DEMPTION OF OUR BODY (Rom. 8:23) — *^the 
adoption of sons " being, as he says in Gal. 3 : 4, 
God's great and ultimate purpose when he "sent 
forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the 
law; to redeem them that were under the law, that 
we might receive the adoption of sons y Thus, too, 
Christ himself states the case, in John 6 : 38-40 : 
" I came down from heaven, not to do mine own 
will, but the will of him that sent me. And this 



6 THE BURIED NATIONS 

is the Father's will who hath sent me, that of 
all that which he hath given me I should lose 
nothing, but should raise it up again at the last 
day. And this is the will of him that sent me, 
that every one that seeth the Son and believeth 
on him should have eternal life ; and I will raise 
him up at the last day.^^ To the same effect 
Peter tells us that all heaven, both prophets, and 
saints and angels, are standing in waiting ex- 
pectancy of ^^ the salvation ready to be revealed in 
the last time^^ (1 Pet. 1:4-12); and Paul adds 
that not only we, but '* the whole creation,^^ in 
groaning and travailing hope, with outstretched 
neck is likewise *' waiting for the manifestation 
of the sons of God ; because the creation itself 
also is to be delivered out of the bondage of cor- 
ruption into the glorious liberty of the children of 
God.'' Rom. 8 : 18-23. 

It is evidently the same ^^creation^^ of which 
we are part ; for in 2 Pet. 3 : 5-13, the Spirit of 
Inspiration speaks by Peter of ^Hhe heavens and 
the earth" which were before the Flood; "the 
WORLD that then WAS, which being overflowed 
by water, perished"; then next, of "the heavens 
and the earth that are now" — the world that 
NOW is; which is in like manner to be swept 
with a flood of fire — swept clean of sin and sin- 
ners ; — and then he tells us that believing men 



OF THE INFANT DEAD, 



of that day, "according to God's promise, were 
looking for new heavens and a new earth [the 

WORLD that is TO BE HEREAFTER], wherein 

dwelleth righteousness "; something which seems 
wholly to have passed out of the hopes and ex- 
pectations of most Christians in our day ; many 
of whom regard all serious "looking for such 
things " as evidence of a disordered fancy or an 
unbalanced mind. 

Having in view this same great and common 
hope of the Apostolic Church, Paul tells the He- 
brews, who expected the literal and immediate 
fulfilment of the same misunderstood promises, 
that unto his only-begotten Son^ and " not unto 
angels J did God subject (R. V.) the world to come^ 
whereof we speaks Heb. 2:5. In the Greek text 
"the world to come" is in its form wholly un- 
exampled, being literally " the habitable (or in- 
habited) earthy the one that is to be "; words 
which by no possibility can be tortured into 
meaning "the Gospel Dispensation," by any who 
understand the meaning of Greek words. As the 
writer had not so much as referred to any such 
thing, the words "whereof we speak" can only 
mean, about which we Christians are always talk- 
ing. Peter says they were looking for it, — not 
today nor tomorrow, but in due season; and 
Paul says that they were always talking about it^ 



8 THE BUEIED DSTATIONS 

as the end of their hopes. And all through the 
New Testament we find that this was the literal 
fact; as he tells the Corinthian Christians that 
"they came behind in no gift, waiting for the 
COMING (or the revelation) of our Lord Jesus 
Christ" (1 Cor. 1:7); and reminds the Thessa- 
lonians (1 Thes. 1:10) "how they turned unto 
God from idols, to serve the living and true God, 

AND TO WAIT FOR HIS SON FROM HEAVEN, whom 

he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who deliv- 
ered us from the wrath to come," — the wrath 
which is to overwhelm the world of the ungodly, 
and wipe it clean again of sin and sinners, 
Rom. 1 : 18 ; 2 Thes. 1 : 8-10. 

And in Titus 2 : 11-15, he gives us this full- 
length portrait of a Christian of the first century 
and the Apostolic Church : " For the grace of God, 
which bringeth salvation unto all men [and not 
to Jews only], hath appeared; teaching us that 
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should 
live soberly, righteously and godly, in this present 
world (or age), looking for that blessed hope 

AND THE GLORIOUS APPEARING OF THE GREAT 

GOD AND OUR SAVIOR [or of OUT great God and 
Savior^^ Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, 
that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and 
purify unto himself a peculiar people [=a people 
peculiarly his own, or of his exclusive posses- 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 9 

sion], zealous of good works. These things 
speak and exhort,''^ etc. And however seldom 
referred to in our day, in the nature of things it 
must be even more important and timely to 
"speak and exhort of these things" now than it 
was in apostolic times ; "for now is our salvation 
nearer than when we (or they) first believed."* 
Rom. 13 : 11. 

When in the days of Noah, "the Flood came 
(upon a careless and ungodly world) and took 



* In reply to the frequent allegation that they were a 
badly deceived set, to be ''looking for such things'* so 
far ahead of time^ it will be sufficient to ask: In what other 
time were they individually to look for them, except in 
their own brief hand-breadth of time, ** which they spent 
as a shadow on the earth"? The infidel, Krnest Renan, 
was at least self- consistent (which some so-called ** liber al" 
Christians are not) in representing that Jesus was himself 
the leader of the deluded host; for that at one period of his 
life * * he certainly expected that within 30 or 40 years he 
would come, with his mighty angels, flying in the clouds 
of heaven." But, as Paul says, **the foolishness of God 
is wiser than men ; ' ' for what other way was there to have 
each successive generation of his people **like servants 
who wait for their lord, when he shall return from the 
wedding" ? That they have ceased to be such, is the real 
cause of the worldliness and self-indulgence of the pro- 
fessed Christian Church. To the holy dead it has really 
made no difference, as they will be on hand just the same 
** in that day " ; and meantime they wait in heaven, ^^with 
Christ, "^^ till ^^them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him,'' IThes. 4:14. 



10 THE BURIED NATIONS 

them all away," the new world was re-peopled 
by Noah and them that were with him in the 
ark. Gen. 10:32. And thus when again the 
world is swept clean of sin and sinners by that 
coming flood of fire, it wdll (as I read the Scrip- 
tures) be re-peopled by saved and resurrected 
saints; who will be principally the infant 
DEAD. And be it remembered (because too often 
forgotten or denied), that "resurrected saints" 
will be as real and true men and women, 
and a great deal more so, than ever they were in 
"this body of sin and death." The resurrected 
Jesus said to his amazed disciples, of his risen 
and "spiritual body": "Behold my hands and 
my feet, that it is I myself; for a spirit hath 
not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.^^ Luke 
24 : 39. And thirty years after he had ascended 
to glory, the apostle said : We are members of 

HIS BODY, OF HIS FLESH AND OF HIS BONES. 

Eph. 5 : 39, Yet so deeply rooted is this semi- 
manichean prejudice against the salvation of our 
body (a true, material body, albeit with different 
properties), that Mr. Moody did not think it 
beneath the dignity and importance of the subject 
to affirm that ^'when Jesus went away to heaven 

HE DID NOT LEAVE HIS FLESH AND BONES 



BEHIND." 



And SO the promise literally runs in Ezekiel, 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 11 

which is not to be explained away as figurative 
language (for figurative language can only be 
based on an objective reality): ^'Behold, oh^ my 
people, I will open your graves, and will cause you 
to come up out of your graves, and I will bring 
you into the land of Israel.^^ Ezek. 37:12. Or, 
as Isaiah no less clearly expresses it: ^^I will 
bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah 
an inheritor of my mountains (or mountain coun- 
try); and mine elect shall inherit it, and my 
servants shall dwell there^^; spoken expressly of 
the new heavens and new earth, in Isa. 65 : 9. 
And to the same purpose our blessed Lord, citing 
one of the manifold repetitions of the 87th Psalm, 
says : *^ Blessed are the meek, for they shall in- 
herit the earth^^ (Matt. 5:5); which Prov. 2: 
21, 22 repeats in this form : '^ For the upright 
shall dwell in the land [or earth, w^hich is the 
same thing in Hebrew and in Greek], and the 
perfect shall remain in it; but the wicked shall be 
cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall 
be rooted out of it.^^ 

With this compare Isa. 26 : 17-21; spoken to 
God's few and dispirited people of the olden 
time : Zion ! ^^ thy dead men shall live, together 
with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and 
sing, ye that dwell in the dust ! for thy dew is as 
the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast 



12 THE BTJKIED NATIONS 

OUT THE DEAD. Come, my people, enter thou 
into thy chambers, and shut the doors about 
thee ; hide thyself, as it were for a little moment, 
until the indignation be overpast. For, behold 
THE Lord (Jehovah) cometh out of his place 

TO PUNISH THE INHABITANTS OP THE WORLD FOR 

THEIR INIQUITY ; the earth also shall disclose her 
blood (Heb. bloods = blood violently and wickedly 
shed), and shall no more cover her slain," "When 

HE MAKETH INQUISITION FOR BLOOD (bloods, again) 
he REMEMBERETH THEM ; HE FORGETTETH NOT THE 

CRY OF THE HUMBLE." What a day of reckon- 
ing that will be for France, and Spain, and for 
the Babylonian Woman, " drunken with the blood 
of saints," who set them on! "It shall be more 
tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of 
judgment, than for thee." Mat. 11 : 24. Com- 
pare 2 Kings 24 : 4. 

It is natural and unavoidable for us, in address- 
ing such as have come to years of discretion, to 
insist on it *' that they repent, and turn to God, 
and do works meet for repentance " (Acts 26 : 20) ; 
that "they believe and obey the Gospel"; that 
they "take the yoke of Christ" and wear it, 
"and learn of him," as indispensable to their 
becoming "heirs of the kingdom which God has 
prepared for them that love him" (James 2:5); 
but on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, when 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 13 

mothers were bringing their babes that Jesus 
might bless them, and the disciples rebuked the 
mothers for interrupting the Master's discourse 
about matters more important, as they supposed, 
we are told, for once, that ^^ Jesus was much dis- 
pleased, and said : Suffer the little children to 
come unto me, and forbid them not; FOR OF 
SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD." Mark 
10:13, 14. These words are sometimes used as 
authority for presenting infants to God in holy 
baptism; but one moment's reflexion will con- 
vince us that the words have nothing to do with 
the ordinance of baptism ; first, because Christ- 
ian baptism was not then instituted ; and secondly, 
because in fact we do not suffer the little children 
to come unto him in holy baptism, except the 
children of professedly believing parents — persons 
competent to assume and fulfil the vows of bap- 
tism. 

The captain of an English steamer with whom 
I returned home, after my second term of mis- 
sionary service in Colombia, South America, 
told me he had heard the bishop of Trinidad, the 
large island at the mouth of the river Orinoco, 
peopled mostly by ignorant and half-christianized 
negroes and Indians, under the British flag, say 
that the large majority of babies baptized in his 
diocese were bastards. I am not responsible for 



14 THE BURIED NATIONS 

the statement, but it is quite in line with the 
state of morals down there, both on the islands 
and on the mainland, where most of the people 
in Venezuela and Colombia are born out of wed- 
lock ; and I suppose that we Presbyterians would 
under such circumstances prefer to turn Baptists, 
rather than prostitute thus one of the most pre- 
cious ordinances of God's house ; just as we might 
be induced to turn Quakers, if law and usage, 
under a State Church, required every bailiff and 
sheriff to *^take the sacrament," as an indispens- 
able condition to holding office; as I am informed 
was the case in England one or two centuries 
ago. 

It is more customary to understand the words 
as teaching that a childlike character and dispo- 
sition are necessary to enter heaven ; using them 
as a strict parallel to Christ's words on another 
occasion : ^^ Except ye be converted and become 
as little children^ ye shall in no wise enter into 
the kingdom of heaven." Matt. 18 : 3. But is 
that all, or the half of what our Master intended 
to teach by these precious words? '^ Of such-like 
is the kingdom of heaven ^^ would be an insuffer- 
able dilution of them. Still further, they may be 
properly and strikingly applied to the case of 
those of us from whom God in his holy, wise and 
no doubt beneficent providence, takes away our 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 15 



babes ; and in spite of our earnest hopes and 
prayers (and sometimes in spite of the impotent 
and violent protests of the ungodly), bears away 
on angels' wings their souls to his own imme- 
diate presence, and lays away securely their in- 
fant bodies in the silent tomb — planted (or sown^ 
as Paul expresses it) in ''God's acre," against 
the great harvest day. 

Calvin and Dying Infants. 

Dr. Philip Henry in his Life and Times of 
Calvin, affirms that Calvin was the first of the 
Reformers of the 16th century to hold and teach 
that dying infants are saved without baptism; 
and yet by the art and subtlety of Satan, and the 
perversity of human nature, there are some Prot- 
estants even who do not cease to represent that 
Calvinists, and especially Presbyterians, hold to 
the damnation of infants. Now if truth and 
honesty were their end and purpose, instead of 
*^ bearing false witness against their neighbors," 
who protest against the horrible imputation, as a 
baseless calumny, why are they not brave enough 
to lay the charge where it properly belongs, 
and where there would be no uncharity in mak- 
ing it, nor any difficulty in proving it? Why 
spare the Papal Church, which openly and fear- 
lessly holds and teaches that without water bap- 



16 THE BUKIED NATIONS 

tism there is no salvation^ and that all unbap- 
TiZED INFANTS, dying so, ARE LOST ! Their doctors 
are not agreed among themselves as to what 
becomes of them, some holding that they are in 
fact *' damned''; some others, that they never 
attain to the condition of rational beings ; others 
that they are consigned to a painless and eternal 
state of ^' Limbo"; but they are all agreed that 
all such are not, and never can be saved, and are 
eternally excluded from heaven ; — for the lack of 
somebody (man, woman, or midwife) to apply the 
water, and repeat over them, with the right inten- 
tion, the formula of Christian baptism. Thus 
they include among the lost, and make no diffi- 
culty about confessing it, the numberless multi- 
tudes of the infant dead of all the heathen nations, 
of Mohammedans, Jews, Baptists, Quakers, and 
the churchless masses of Christian lands, who 
disregard the Christian Church and all its insti- 
tutions. Pray, why all this tenderness about the 
feelings of Roman Catholics and ritualists, while 
bravely heaping the malicious charge on Calvin- 
ists and Presbyterians ? 

" Elect Infants, Dyin^ in Infancy." 

The Presbyterian Confession of Faith, in treat- 
ing of Effectual Calling, or the personal applica- 
tion of the redemptive work of Christ, has of 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 17 

necessity to treat of the case of infants who die 
before they become responsible beings. Of these 
and others hke them, Chap. X, Sec. 3, says; 
'^ Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated 
and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who work- 
eth when, where and how he pleaseth. So also are 
other elect persons [idiots, imbeciles, etc.] in- 
capable of being called outwardly by the word." 
This phrase, ^^ elect infants, dying in infancy," 
has been singled out by some persons who have 
forgotten the fundamental law, ^'Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself ^^^ to fix upon Presbyterians 
the stigma of ^^the damnation of infants"; as 
teaching that non-elect infants, dying in infancy 
are lost — a sample of the bad logic of some men 
who are as gentle as lambs, and as mum as mice, 
as respects the logical consequences, and the 
openly professed consequences, of the heresy of 
Baptismal Eegeneration. We freely confess that 
the phraseology, w^hich 300 years ago had prob- 
ably a reference now lost, is unfortunate and 
needlessly perplexing, if not misleading. ^^Elect 
PERSONS, dying in infancy," would fully express 
the idea of the Confession of Faith, and would be 
free from all possible misunderstanding. 

The fundamental idea of Calvinism is that 
fallen human nature is so far gone avv^ay from 
what it originally was, and was intended to be, 



18 THE BURIED NATIONS 

and so hostile to a holy and sin-hating God, that 
only the powerful and effectual drawing of divine 
grace will suffice to bring men to Christ and keep 
them there. This Christ himself expressly states 
in John 6 : 44 ; and all experience and observa- 
tion attest its truth. And so it is held in com- 
mon by all Evangelical Churches, and confession- 
ally by the Roman Catholic Church as well. All 
alike hold that fallen human nature is so im- 
potent for, and made opposite to, everything 
spiritually good, that left to ourselves, we will 
alw^ays and persistently go wrong and depart 
from God. Even the Articles of Religion of the 
Methodist Church, which is popularly supposed 
to be the most opposite to the peculiar doctrines 
of Calvinism, says in Art. VIII, on Free Will, 
that ^^we have no power to do good works, pleasant 
and acceptable to God, without the grace of God 
by Christ preventing us (that is, going before), 

THAT WE MAY HAVE A GOOD WILL, AND WORK- 
ING WITH US WHEN WE HAVE THAT GOOD WILL." 

That rightly understood, is about as much as a 
Calvinist would ask. For if God give us a good 
will, and work with us while we have it, we will 
of course take the right way and keep it; and 
unless he keeps on giving us that good will, we 
will certainly go back from following him. And 
no one who rightly looks at it, will ever doubt 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 19 

that the good will which God now purposes to 
give to his obedient people, and keep on giving, 
it is, and ever was, his eternal and unchangeable 
purpose to give and keep on giving them. The 
eternal Jehovah can never change his mind and 
purpose. God^s present performance and his eter- 
nal purpose are as exactly alike as your face and 
its image in a looking-glass. Methodists, Bap- 
tists and Presbyterians alike pray: *^Draw us, 

AND WE WILL RUN AFTER THEE I " with the same 

absolute certainty as to the result. Or, as 
Augustine has it : ** Give what thou askest, and 
ask what thou wilt." 

But though these precious words of Christ 
have no application whatever to the baptism of 
infants ( and in the common belief of Evangelical 
Christians, unbaptized persons dying in infancy 
go to heaven as surely as the baptized), they do 
have a very striking and most consolatory appli- 
cation, not only to the case of the infants of 
Christian parents, but to all deceased infants, of 
all ages, past, present and future — the dead and 
dying infants of all nations, tribes, peoples, 
tongues, colors and religions. These all, accord- 
ing to the belief of Gospel-loving people in gen- 
eral, are gathered home to God; and as they were 
made partakers of Adam's sin and fally without 
act or volition of their own, so without act or 



20 THE BURIED NATIONS 

volition of their own they are ^^made partakers 
of the redemption purchased by Christ,^^ and are 
renewed and sanctified by his Spirit/^ who work- 
eth when, where and how he wiliy 

And as Jesus teaches us in the parable of 
Lazarus and the Rich Man, that *^ Lazarus died, 
and was carried away by the angels into Abra- 
ham's bosom'' (Luke 16:22), so we unanimously 
accept and believe, by satisfactory inference from 
the clearest teachings of God's Word, that the 
same divine messengers, who are ^' all of them 
ministering spirits^ sent forth to minister for them 
who shall be heirs of salvation" (R. V., Heb. 
1 :14), are also sent forth to bear away the little 
ones, sinners by no choice or consent of their 
own, and take them up to one of the "many 
mansions in our Father's house" on high, to 
share in the blessedness of the dead who die in 
the Lord; and whom, together with 'Hhem that 
sleep in Jesus, God will bring with him,'' when 
he shall send him *'the second time without sin 
unto salvation." Heb. 9:28. If our distracted 
hearts could listen attentively at such an hour, 
and catch the rush of angels' wings, even our 
little faith would be sufficient to hear our loving 
and compassionate Redeemer say again : *^ Suffer 
the little children to come unto me, and forbid 
them not." 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 21 

The Kingdom. 

"The kingdom of God," or as Matthew mostly 
prefers to call it, "the kingdom of heaven," does 
not mean, and perhaps never does mean, "heaven" 
in our ordinary use of the word, as locally dis- 
tinct from the earth ; firsts because that kingdom 
is locally on earth, and is coming , but not yet 
come. It lies in the future, Christ himself bid- 
ding us daily and ceaselessly in prayer to say : 
"Thy kingdom come ; thy will be done as in 
HEAVEN, so ON EARTH." And Secondly, because 
(following the A. V., which is here every way 
simpler and more intelligible than the R. V.), 
^^ Jesus Christ shall judge the quick and the dead 

AT HIS APPEARING AND HIS KINGDOM." 1 Tim. 

4:1. That the day of his Second Coming is the 
day of his Kingdom, he himself tells us expressly 
in the words : " When the Son of Man shall come 
in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, 

THEN SHALL HE SIT UPON THE THRONE OF HIS 

glory"; and "then shall he say" to his faithful 
people : " Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit 
(or possess) the kingdom prepared for you 
(the just) from the foundation of the world.^^ 
The world was " founded " as a kingdom of right- 
eousness and not of deviltry. Matt. 25:31-34. 
And to the same effect he says in Rev. 3:21: 
"To him that overcometh will I grant (in the 



22 THE BTJBIED STATIONS 

great hereafter) to sit with me in my throne, 
even as I also overcame and am set down with 
MY Father in his throne "; where the contrast 
could not be more marked than it is between the 
future and the present, or between *^ my throne" 
and '^ my Father's throne." So too Jesus again 
declares that it is " in the regeneration " — or " the 
New Creation,^' as the words are rendered back 
into Hebrew, in which no doubt he spoke them — 
that *Hhe Son of man ^hall sit in the throne of 
his glory ^^ (Matt. 19 : 28); of which those persons 
seem never to think, who would delay as long 
as possible the time of his appearing. 

To the same purpose again Peter writes : 
'* Wherefore the rather, brethren, give all dili- 
gence to make your calling and election sure; 
for if ye do these things, ye shall never fail ; for 
so an entrance shall he ministered unto you 
abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ^ 2 Pet. 1 : 10-11. 

Thus we reach the solid conclusion that ^Hhe 
Kingdom of God" does not mean ^^heaven,^' hut 
always God^s re-established empire over this 
world, which he made for himself and his people, 
and not for his enemies, together with all the 
steps which lead up to that glorious consumma- 
tion in the Great Day. And then the question 
recurs with redoubled force, ^^What did Christ 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 23 

mean by saying of the little ones he was blessing: 
''Of such is the kingdom of God"? Let us 
examine this point dispassionately and thor- 
oughly ; not as a matter of sentiment, but in the 
clear light of Scripture teaching. 

Infants and the Kingdom* 

When he ''came down from heaven" "to de- 
stroy the works of the Devil," and to obliterate 
the kingdom of the Wicked One, and re-estab- 
lish on its ruins the Kingdom of God, subverted 
by the malice and subtlety of Satan; '^to make an 
end of sins and to bring in everlasting righteous- 
ness, to swallow up death in victory, and to wipe 
away tears from off all faces," we do not hesitate 
to affirm (since we utterly repudiate the Roman 
Catholic doctrine of "Limbo," both "of the 
fathers" and "of infants") that he left behind 
him in heaven innumerable millions of the infant 
dead, who since the advent of sin and death in 
the w^orld had been gathering there, waiting for 
the purposed and promised redemption of the 
people of God, in " the day of Christ^^^ which is 
emphatically called "the day of redemption, 
whereunto by his Spirit we are sealed." Eph. 4:30. 

The uniform and self-consistent testimony of 
Scripture is that "This man [our Priest — Mod- 
ern Spanish Version] after that he had offered 



24 THE BURIED NATIONS 

one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the 
right hand of God ; from henceforth expect- 
ing — waiting — till his enemies be made his 
footstool" (Heb. 10:12, 13); from whence he 
sends the message by John the beloved, in Apoc- 
alyptic vision: '^To him that overcometh will I 
grant (in the Judgment Day?) to sit with me 
in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am 
set down with my Father in his throne." Rev. 
3:21. And so, meantime, while ^^ expecting" — 
waiting there, according to the unanimous belief 
of Evangelical Christians, and the plainest teach- 
ing of the apostle Paul (Phil. 1:21, 23, and 
2 Cor. 5 : 6, 8), he receives to himself the depart- 
ing souls of the saints, — the dying Stephen evi- 
dently expected that he would ^'receive his spirit" 
there — to wait with him, while he waits, till all 
his enemies (including death and the Devil, 
Heb. 2 : 11) are put beneath his feet. From this 
we infer with confidence that the infant dead of 
all the past ages, and of all the buried nations, 
peoples and tribes of the earth, during the 4000 
years of the reign of sin and death until then, 
were also there with him in blessedness, waiting 
*'the Day of Redemption"; — a numberless mul- 
titude which no man can reckon up ; probably 
three-fourths, or more, of the race of the Sinner 
Adam. So that when Jesus said, '*0f such is 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 25 

the Kingdom of God," it is not humanly possible 
that he lost sight of the countless millions of the 
infant dead he left in glory when he came down 
from heaven. And to these, 1900 years later, 
we properly add the even greater multitudes who 
since then have joined the waiting "congregation 
of the (infant) dead." In the minds of a great 
many persons this subject is hopelessly entan- 
gled by their failure to keep distinctly before 
their minds the fact that 'Ho this end the Son of 
God was manifested, that he might destroy 
THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL "; *4o make an end 
of sins," and "to bring in everlasting righteous- 
ness," "to swallow up death in victory," and to 
"wipe away tears from off all faces"; and to 
secure as the great result of his mission, that 
the will of God be done on earthy even as it is in 
heaven. He came, as the apostle says, "to put 

AWAY SIN BY THE SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF." Heb. 

9:26. 

The Personnel of the Kingdom. 

To make this point in reference to the infant 
dead unmistakably clear, note first, that Christ is 
"the Lamb slain from the foundation of 
THE world (Rev. 13:8) — a sacrifice having 
retroactive as well as prospective effect ; an effi- 
cacy reaching back to the beginning of the world 



26 THE BURIED NATIONS 

as well as to its end ; and secondly, that in the 
sight of the Eternal Jehovah, our creature dis- 
tinctions of time, as past, present and future, do 
not exist ; so that the payment of their ransom, 
though future to them, as it is past to us, was 
always as present to him as when Jesus cried: 
'*It is finished," on the cross. Why, then, 
should they not be waiting in heaven, as well as 
in *' Limbo,'' or some other imaginary abode of 
disembodied souls ? Jesus tells us, purposely to 
answer our every doubt : *^ In my Father's House 
are many mansions " — room enough for all. 
John 11 : 2. But the common assumption that 
disembodied souls are organized beings (like 
angels or spirits), armed and equipped for any 
and every manner of work or service, is surely 
an extravagance, to which the Bible does not 
give the least countenance. Of what departed 
soul does it give us any information whatever ? 
The holy dead are ^^ blessed while yet dead^^ ; 
they are *^with Christ" where he is ; ^* comforted" 
and *^far better" off than when here; but what 
they are doing, or capable of doing, except ^^ wait- 
ing for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our 
body^^ (Rom. 8 : 23), are points on which it has 
pleased God to shed not one ray of light. John 
does not tell us that he saw his brother James 
in glory (as did ^neas his father Anchises, in 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 27 

Virgil's fable); and whether Moses, when with 
Elias in the Mount of Transfiguration, was in 
the body or out of it, no one can say ; for Luke 
tells us that ^^ two men were with him, who were 
Moses and Elias" — and a disembodied soul is not 
a man ; Jesus also seems plainly to intimate in 
the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, that 

ONLY BY RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD COuld 

Lazarus be sent to the rich man's father's house: 
and Samuel accounted that it was an unexam- 
pled thing, and a great impertinence, that he was 
disturbed, to bring him up. See Note 27 on sheol 
and hades in my Studies on Genesis, p. 430 ; and 
on Old Testament Eschatology, p. 59. 

I draw another line of Scripture proof, even 
more striking and pointed, from Heb. 11 : 11-13: 
"Through faith also Sarah herself received 
strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of 
a child when she was past age, because she 
judged him faithful who had promised. There- 
fore sprang there of one, and him as good as 
dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multi- 
tude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore 
innumerable: these all died in faitpi, not 
having received the promises," etc. These words 
apply to the spiritual seed of Abraham in their 
sohdarity, and no more exclude the dead babies, 
than do those other words, that are sometimes 



28 THE BURIED NATIONS 

SO misconstrued : ^' He that belie veth and is bap- 
tized shall be saved" (Mark 16:16), exclude 
the living ones from baptism. The certainty 
that they do in fact include the infant dead of 
Abraham's natural descendants, is most obvious 
from the certainty that they can apply only to a 
scattered " few^^ of his adult descendants. Ishmael 
and the Ishmaelites are of course not included ; 
Esau was '^a profane person " and a reprobate, 
in spite of his fine points ; at least ten of the 
twelve sons of Jacob were wicked men ; and their 
descendants in Egypt (including Moses himself, 
up to the time of his conversion and that of his 
divine call to deliver the people from Egyptian 
bondage) had forgotten even the name, and 
every distinctive name of the God of their fathers 
(Ex. 3:13), and were, with rare exceptions, 
hopelessly sunk in Egyptian idolatries; in the 
wilderness they were so utterly lost to God and 
to his service, that in his indignation Jehovah 
threatened to smite them with pestilence and dis- 
inherit them, and make of Moses a greater 
nation than they. Num. 14 : 15. And in point 
of fact, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, 
they * Vere overthrown in the wilderness." 1 Cor. 
10 : 5. And after they were established in their 
own promised land, the prophets of God often 
denounced them as being *^ worse than the 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 29 

heathen whom he had cast out from before 
them," and the '^carcasses" of this same chosen 
people " were given to be meat for the fowls of 
the heaven and the beasts of the earth." Jer. 6:33. 
And thus, all the way down their national his- 
tory, and even to the time that this Epistle to 
the Hebrews was written, they showed themselves 
to be a '^stiff-necked" and obdurate race, of 
whom Jesus said that it would be '^ more toler- 
able for Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of 
Judgment than for them"; and of whom the 
martyred Stephen asked : '^ Which of the prophets 
did not your fathers persecute? and they slew 
them that showed before the coming of that Just 
One, of whom ye have now become the betrayers 
and murderers." Acts 7 : 52. When then, and 
in what point of Jewish history, do we find any 
trace of that already deceased and departed spir- 
itual seed of Abraham, numerous as the sand 
and as the stars of the sky, except among the 
INFANT DEAD ? For to this Same professed peo- 
ple of God, the children of Abraham according to 
the flesh, Jesus said: '^ Strait is the gate and 
narrow the way which leadeth unto life, and few 
THERE BE THAT FIND IT " — the Way. Matt. 7 : 11. 
Along this line the words of President Jona- 
than Edwards, in Part II, Sec. 1 of his " History 
of Redemption," have great weight : '* There 



30 THE BURIED NATIONS 

probably were more souls converted to God in the 
age of the apostles, than had been before from the 
beginning of the world,^^ I believe, if my mem- 
ory does not betray me, that the best ecclesiasti- 
cal statisticians estimate that at the close of the 
first century, the converts to Christianity would 
number about 100,000 only ; of the second, about 
one million or more ; and of the third, three or 
four millions ; and probably not more than four 
million professed adherents when Constantino 
declared Christianity the religion of the Empire, 
about the year 324 ; — only one hundred thousand 
real and true converts to God and to godliness in 
the long-drawn period of 4000 years of Satan's 
almost undisputed sovereignty of this world ; of 
which he told Jesus to his face that it was his, and 
he meant to maintain his sovereignty I Luke 4:6. 
What a woeful view does this give us of the long 
and terrific contest through which the heavenly 
War has lasted thus far ! And what a view of 
sin it gives us ! Yet even this looks bright as 
contrasted with the dictum of David : 

*^ The Lord looked down from heaven upon 
the children of men, 

to see if there were any that did under- 
stand, 

that did seek God. 

They are all gone aside; 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 31 

they are altogether become filthy ; 

there is none that doeth goody no, not one.'^ 

Ps. 14:2. 
And human nature is as bad, and the heart of 
man as wicked and deceitful today, as ever it 
was I What wonder is it that Jesus loved the 
babies, and said, '^Suffer them to come unto me; 
for of such is the Kingdom of God^'? And if 
men and women yet cleave to sin in this twenti- 
eth century of grace, what may they expect and 
look for ? 

I take it therefore as sufficiently proved that 
the infant dead of Hebrew parents, much more 
numerous (as we shall show farther on) than the 
totality of such as reached adult age, formed by 
far the greater par' of that numberless multitude 
to whom the words* of Heb. 11 : 12 apply ; and if 
these were then '*more in number than the stars 
of the sky and the sand by the seaside," — out of 
one small nation only, what shall we say of the 
incomparably greater multitudes ol the infant 
dead of all nations, outside of Jewry and of 
Christendom as well, of all ages, and colors and 
tribes of the earth, on whom neither Jewish nor 
Christian light has ever shined, down to the 
present day? We may therefore safely assume 
as proved, that while '^ those who by patient con- 
tinuance in well-doing seek for glory, honor and 



32 THE BURIED NATIONS 

' 1 

immortality," and do in the end ^'obtain eternal 
life/' will form a most important part of Christ's 
coming Kingdom of Righteousness and Life Eter- 
nal, they will by no means form the whole of it, 
nor yet the half, nor the fourth of it ; for the 
infant dead of all ages and all nations and peo- 
ples will form so immeasurably the greater part 
of it, that in ^Uhe Day of Redemption," when, 
the Lord '^writeth up the nations" of the 
redeemed and finally saved (Ps. 87:8), it may 
without exaggeration be said of them: *^ Of such 
is the Kingdom of God"; — chiefly composed of 
them. 

In the parable of The Great Supper, our Lord 
sets forth the fact, which was no fancy sketch, 
that the invited guests, first class, would not 
come; next, he sent out his servants into the 
streets and lanes of the town to bring in the 
poor, maimed and halt, a second class such as 
no rich man ever yet entertained at his own 
table ; and when the supply from this source was 
exhausted, he sent them out more urgently than 
before, saying: '^Go out into the highways and 
hedges, and compel them to come in ; that my 
HOUSE MAY BE FILLED." Lukc 14 : 23. To the 
same purpose, in the parable of The Marriage of 
the King's Son, 'Hhe wedding was filled with 
guests," though the invitations were at first unan- 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 33 

imously and repeatedly rejected. Matt. 22 : 1-10. 
In times of religious declension in general, and 
especially when ^Hhe prince of this world," who 
laid the kingdoms of the world and their glory, 
riches and pomp at our Redeemer's feet, as his, 
if he would only accept them at his hands, as his 
liege lord, now as never before in the history of 
the Church, assaults her feeble faith with the 
self-same temptation; and the frivolous, the 
worldly and the wicked are asking whether 

CHRISTIANITY IS NOT AFTER ALL A FAILURE, this 

Study on the Buried Nations of the Infant Dead 
comes to shed a flood of light on the question 
of the relation of the Church and its mission 
towards an unbelieving and too often a hostile 
world. At one time, only four men and four 
women were found (and they none too good) to 
be saved alive, when the world was swept with 
the waters of the Deluge. Only four persons 
escaped from the burning Sodom, and one of 
these became a pillar of salt before the rest reach- 
ed a place of safety. The great Elijah thought 
that he only was left in Israel to serve the God 
of his fathers, and exclaimed bitterly: *'And 
they seek my life to take it away ! " How awak- 
ening, then, and how stimulating the thought, 
that even then and there, God was reaping a 
richer harvest of souls for his coming kingdom 



34 THE BUKIED NATIONS 

of righteousness and life eternal, and ^* sowing" 
the seed-corn of immortality in "God's acre" 
more industriously than Satan was peopling his 
realms of darkness and death. '' The foolishness 
of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of 
God is stronger than men!" Though the great 
majority of men even in our Christian, Protes- 
tant, Bible land refuse to come m, let them know 
assuredly that God has guests prepared to take 
their places. " My house shall be filled." 

The Buried Nations of the Infant Dead. 

From this point of view it is extremely inter- 
esting to consider that most wonderful Messianic 
Psalm, the 87th, which, from the lack of the 
proper view-point, is such an enigma to most 
Christian people (and commentators as well); in 
which the Psalmist, as Dr. J. Addison Alexander 
says, "celebrates the actual security of Zion 
(vrs. 1-3), and anticipates her future honors as 

THE SPIRITUAL BIRTHPLACE OF THE NATIONS (vrS. 

4-7)." "The theme or idea of the whole Psalm, 
that Zion should yet be the birthplace of all 
nations, is again repeated under a new figure, 
that of registration: *The Lord shall count, 
when he writeth up the people,^ etc. The mean- 
ing is that, as he counts the nations, he shall 
say of each, in turn, one by one, This one was 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 35 

born there, ^^ *^When he writeth up the people" 
would be naturally understood of the people of 
Israel. But in the Hebrew text it reads '^ the 
PEOPLES." Alexander, and the Jewish translator, 
Isaac Leeser, translate ^^the nations" — all na- 
tions, as Alexander says, and as is repeated 
many times over in the Bible. Considering, as 
Alexander does, that the Psalm was written and 
sung to celebrate the triumphal overthrow oi 
Sennacherib and his hosts, in the days of Heze- 
kiah and Isaiah, how daring the thought, and 
how presumptuous to all who have no faith in 
God and his prophetic word, that the poor, 
oppressed and derided Zion was yet to be the 
birthplace of all nations, including Egypt, and 
Babylon, and Tyre, and Philistia, and Ethiopia; 
or as Isaac Watts beautifully paraphrases it — 

'* Egypt, and Tyre, and Greek and Jew 
shall there begin their lives anew) 
angels and men shall join to sing 
the Hill whence living waters spring." 

But besides the 87th Psalm, the same thing is 
often predicted in the Word of God, without this 
striking and picturesque mention of the nations 
one by one, and by name. To Abraham it was 
promised, and by solemn covenant secured, that 
he should be *^ the father of a multitude of na- 



36 THE BUBIED NATION'S 

tions^^^ and that in him and in his seed all the 
nations of the earth should be blessed. Without 
enlarging on this point, or attempting to cite the 
innumerable passages, which are familiar to all 
students of Scripture, I produce two more, which 
cover the whole ground. In Ps. 86:8, 10, we 
have this express promise and declaration: ^^All 
nations which thou hast made shall come and 
worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify 
thy name^ And in Ps. 22 : 27, David gives us 
this as the fruit and outcome of the anguish 
of that Just and Holy Sufferer, whom he there 
portrays to us : ^^ All the ends of the earth shall 
remember and shall turn unto the Lord, and all 
the kindreds of the nations shall worship before 
thee:' 

•♦The Millennium." 

It is the purpose of this discussion to show, 
and I think that before I am done I shall con- 
clusively PROVE, that these predictions in ref- 
erence to Egypt and Babylon and Philistia, and, 
in a word, the other dead and buried nations or 
the pasty both known and unknown, whose infant 
dead await in their graves "the resurrection of 
life," [all that are in the graves," says 
Christ, "shall hear his voice and shall come 
FORTH," John 5:28-29], and whose spirits in 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 37 

heaven are (with the apostle Paul) ^^waiting for 
the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body^^ 
(Rom. 8:23), will be fulfilled literally at ^^ the 
resurrection of thejust^^; and can only be ful- 
filled BY THE RESURRECTION OF THESE DEAD 
NATIONS, in the persons of their dead babes 
(** elect infants," truly), who to all human ap- 
pearance were made and born to no purpose. To 
relieve the mind of the reader from all uncer- 
tainty, or confusion, I anticipate its mention 
here; and if the Bible proof be still lacking in 
completeness, I hope to furnish it in superabun- 
dance further along. I hope also to show that 
this view of the case, strangely overlooked in all 
premillennial and postmillennial schemes of the 
fulfilment of the ancient prophecies — we all believe 
in the salvation of infants, but don't know what 
to do with them when saved — sets aside com- 
pletely the basis of all popular theories of '' The 
Millennium," as the great predicted time for the 
ingathering of souls into the kingdom of God. 
The Nations of the Infant Dead will stand for 
a good fulfilment of the predictions of better 
days to come, without the risks and positive 
dangers which attend all the theories of 'Hhe 
Millennium" I ever heard of. Our fathers of the 
Reformation and post-Reformation periods dis- 
carded the whole thing as a vain conceit, and 



38 THE BURIED NATIONS 

why should we, in spite of our Lord's most sol- 
emn and repeated charges, allow this "baseless 
fabric of a dream" to interpose between us and 
*Hhe Hope of our Calling," and say with a 
drowsy, sleeping and unbelieving world: "My 
Lord delay eth his coming" — for a good thousand 
years yet ? 

It used to be customary, and among many it 
still is, to refer these passages, and others like 
them, to the " conversion of the world^^ in the so- 
called " millennium." But this interpretation of 
unfulfilled prophecy, commonly called ^'postmil- 
lennariauy^ has not been current in the English- 
speaking world more than 250 years, and is 
practically unknown to the Churches of Conti- 
nental Europe till this day. Thomas Whitby, 
the commentator, spoke of it, at the beginning of 
the 18th century, as "A New Hypothesis" (see 
Appendix to the Commentary of Patrick, Lowth 
and Whitby); the newness of which consisted in 
putting the "millennium," or the 1000-years' 
binding of Satan, before the Second Advent of 
our Lord, rather than after it ; as was done by 
the Chiliasts or Millennarians of the second and 
third centuries, commonly called in our day, for 
distinction's sake, ^^ Premillennarians^^ — a view 
which had been discredited and rejected in the 
Church since the days of Origen. So too, Joseph 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 39 

Milner, in his Church History, at the close of the 
18th century, says of this ^^new hypothesis": 
^^The learned reader need not be told with how much 
clearer light it (the long discarded millennarian- 
ism of the early centuries) has been revived and 
confirmed in our days." Vol. 1, p. 457. The 
great John Howe and Thomas Whitby seem to 
have devised this happy escape from the incon- 
veniences of the old system, by simply making 
"the millennium" precede rather than follow the 
coming of our Lord, and making the " first resur- 
recion" spiritual rather than real) the great 
Jonathan Edwards, and Thomas Scott, the most 
popular of Family Commentators, gave it ( now 
called Postmillennarianism ) currency and accep- 
tance in all the English-speaking world. On the 
Continent of Europe the term is not in use. 
See Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Millennarianism 
and Premillennarianism. 

Within recent years "the Evangelization of 
the World" has with thoughtful Christians al- 
most completely superseded the phrase " the Con- 
version of the World" (which was in current use 
in the last century), from a more enlightened and 
more Scriptural view of the great business of the 
Gospel Dispensation. According to Christ's own 
parable of "the Tares of the Field," and his own 
explanation of it, the wheat is not to crowd out 



40 THE BURIED NATIONS 

the tares, and the tares are not to be converted 
into wheat, or to be weeded out ; but " both are to 
grow together until the harvest,^^ ^^ which is the 
end of the world {Gr. the age); when the Sou of 
man shall send forth his angels, and they shall 
gather out of his Kingdom all things that offend, 
and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them 
into the furnace of fire:" ^^ then shall the right- 
eous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of 
their Father.'' Matt. 13 : 24-43. And to this 
period refer the great predictions in the old 
Hebrew prophecies of the coming glory, as por- 
trayed under the familiar forms and in the vivid 
coloring of the life that now is. So Peter teaches 
unmistakably in Acts 3 : 19-21, and 1 Pet. 1 : 4- 
13. Many other passages of Scripture teach 
with equal explicitness the same thing, notably 
Christ himself in Matt. 16: 27 and 25: 31-34; 
and Paul in Rom. 2 : 7-16, and 2 Thes. 1 : 6-10. 
And so Richard Baxter (A. D. 1650.) gives 
these four points as the ^^Preparatives'' to "The 
Saints' Everlasting Rest": The Second Advent of 
Christ ; the Resurrection of the dead ; the Day of 
Judgment; and the Coronation of the saints in 
the Kingdom of their Father; teaching that 
meanwhile the souls of believers are with Christ 
in glory. The Westminster Confession teaches 
the same thing, and closes its very last para- 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 41 

graph with these solemn and awakening words : 
*'As Christ would have us to be certainly per- 
suaded that there shall be a Day of Judgment 
[for the settling up of the affairs of the universe, 
disordered by sin], so will he have that day un- 
known to men, that they may shake off all carnal 
security, and be always watchful, because they 
know not at what hour the Lord will come ; and 
be ever prepared to say : *' Come, Lord Jesus. 
come quickly !" 

Baxter freely applies to the " Saints' Everlast- 
ing Rest" the passages of the old prophets that 
are by so many applied to *^The Millennium," 
or the 1000-year period of the binding of Satan ; 
which since the Westminster Confession of Faith 
was written, has come to be popularly interposed 
between our times and the Second Advent, — a 
thing never heard of before ; putting this at a 
distance of at least 1000 years in the future. See 
p. 38. But, in the first place, nothing whatever 
is said about any such thing in connection with 
the binding of Satan* (see Rev. 20 : 1-10); and in 
the second place, these predictions of the coming 
glory and blessing of the people of God, are over 
and over again declared to be for everlasting ages^ 

* There is no intimation that one individual yjHI be con- 
verted to God, much less aU nations, when Satan is bound 
and shut up in prison. 



42 THE BURIED NATIONS 

and bear on their face the impress of an endless 
and changeless eternity : — *4hey shall hunger no 
more," 'Hhirst no more," ^'want no more," 
"war no more," "weep no more," "die no 



more"' 



it 



while the years of eternity roll." 



Limit them to 1000 years, and you spoil them 
completely. Thus to Zion it is said: ^^ Violence 
shall NO MORE be heard in thy land^ wasting nor 
destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt 
call the walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise"; 
^^ and the days of thy mourning shall be ended^^ 
not for 1000 years, but " forever^ even for ever and 
ever I ^^ 

The ^^ conversion of the world," then, of which 
some Christian people still talk, and for which 
they pray, is I think purely imaginary, based on 
an erroneous interpretation of God's promises ; 
which I am glad to believe is fast being given 
up ; for it leads almost necessarily to a secular- 
izing of the Gospel, as being the great agency for 
the elevation of humanity, and the " regeneration 
of society," while "saving the souls" of individ- 
uals who repent and beUeve the Gospel; and 
thus ^^ the Gospel of human progress^^ is with 
multitudes rapidly taking the place of the hum- 
bling Gospel of sin and salvation; which in 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 43 

many of our 19th and 20th century pulpits peo- 
ple will not even listen to. Let such persons, 
who are a great multitude, read the magnificent 
Panegyric of Eusebius Pamphilius on " The 
Splendid State of Our Affairs^^^ in the days of 
Constantine the Great, found in his Church His- 
tory, and be admonished ; — the Gospel was then 
fast losing its purity and vitality. The striking 
parallel to this which our Protestant Christianity 
presents today in Europe and America, is doubt- 
less a great factor, if not the great factor, in the 
present toning down of the Gospel of our fathers^ 
to make it the more effective in this humanita- 
rian scheme for the betterment of mankind, in a 
purely secular sense. 

Against this scheme of salvation by education 
and the elevation of the masses, stand out not 
merely the arguments going before, but the ex- 
press words of our Savior, as well (who surely 
knew better than we do the mission of his 
Gospel), where he says: ''And this Gospel of 
the Kingdom shall be preached in all the worlds 
for a witness unto the nations ; and then shall 
THE END COME." Matt. 24:14. What the need 
for the Gospel to be preached in all the world (or 
as Luke puts it, '' that repentance and remission 
of sins be preached in his name among all na- 
tions j beginning at Jerusalem, Luke 24:46, 47), 



44 THE BURIED NATIONS 

^' for a witness " only, we cannot say, nor is it 
important that we should know; but so it is 
plainly written, and such has been the history of 
the progress of the Gospel from the first century 
until now. No nation of the past or the present 
has ever been ^^ converted ^\* except in a Roman 
Catholic sense, in which ''to christen" is liter- 
ally ''to christianize," and all baptized people 
are "Christians"; and it is evident that if the 
whole world were as much evangelized as our 
own American people (undoubtedly the most 
Christian people under the canopy of heaven — 
in spite of the jfloods of ignorance and ungodli- 
ness "the great red dragon" is vomiting forth 
upon our shores to swallow us up, Rev. 12 : 15), 
we have only to look around us, and glance over 
our morning newspapers, to be convinced that 
even so, we would not distantly approach to the 
predictions of God's ancient prophets, which 
have a heavenly "ring" about them, of which 
our most advanced Christian civilization comes 
infinitely short ; — to say nothing of the fact that 
while our civilization advances, our Christianity 
too often goes backward. The sure promise of 
God reads thus : " The earth shall be full of the 
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the 
sea." Isa. 11 :9. And the 37th Psalm rings the 
changes upon the promise: "jPor yet a little 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 45 

whikf and the wicked shall not be ; yea thou 
shalt diligently consider his place, and he shall 
not be (there — Alexander); but the meek shall 
inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves 
with the abundance of peace." Ps. 37:10, 11. 
And for the greater abundance of certitude to us, 
our Savior bids us daily — ceaselessly — pray: 
"Thy Kingdom come; thy v^ill be done on 
EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN." So the day is 
surely coming when earth shall be clean as 
heaven, and no less holy. See Zech. 14 : 20. 

Relative Numbers of the Infant Dead* 

As regards the relative numbers of the Infant 
Dead, we have no way of forming a satisfactory 
opinion. It is said by some that one half the 
children born die under three years. Of recent 
years infant mortality has been greatly reduced 
— but that is at home. In other civilized lands 
today, the mortality is probably greater than it 
ever was in our America. In the homes of 
paganism and savagery, and in the great cities of 
Europe, Asia and Africa, we lose all account of 
the reckoning ; and when to this is added delib- 
erate child murder, both before and after birth, 
for convenience, and systematically for State rea- 
sons, and run it back through the six thousand 
years of man's apostasy; and when to this we 



46 THE BUEIED NATIONS 

add the sacrificing of the little ones to the croco- 
diles of the Ganges, and to the bloody gods of 
many J or most, ancient religions, and the chances 
and naischances of war, pestilence, famine and 
grinding poverty and oppression, we quite lose 
our breath, and thank God as never before for 
the heavenly words : ^^Suffer the little children to 
come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of 
God." In this matter the Devil would appear to 
have outwitted himself, for three-fourths of the race 
may without extravagance be said to have been 
snatched out of the jaws of the Destroying Lion, 
by this God's ordinance of infant salvation,^ 

We have thus proved that much more than 
half of Adam's race, probably more than three- 
fourths, or possibly four-fifths, have been gar- 
nered by ''untimely deaths" into the Lord's own 
keeping, to await with him the coming day of his 
glory and his power in which '' God will bring 
themwith him^^ ''when he cometh with all his holy 
ones." And we may be sure, without intruding 
into the sphere of things unseen, that "the 
angels, who minister for them who shall be heirs 



* If these figures seem extravagant to people born and 
bred in this land which Gospel light has blessed above all 
others, I refer them to the ** Facts and Statistics on the 
Infant Dead ' ' which I give in the Appendix, at the end of 
the volume. 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 47 

of [the coming] salvation," and who, as the 
words of Christ himself warrant us to believe, 
bear them away from earth to heaven, will not 
be negligent of them there. And angelic teaching 
will be infinitely more conducive to the develop- 
ment of their infantine minds than all the 
*^ schooling" the best of us would be able to 
provide for them here. 

In What Form Will They Come Back? 

But the question is often asked (modifying the 
text to suit the present case): ^*How are the 
(infant) dead raised up, and with what body do 
they come? '' 1 Cor. 15 : 35. Will they be raised 
up as infants or as adults? Accommodating to 
this case also the words which the same apostle 
uses in reference to the same matter, we reply : 
"That which thou sowest, thou sowest not the 
body that shall he^ " It is sown in corruption, 
it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in weak- 
ness, it is raised in power ; it is sown in dis- 
honor, it is raised in glory ; it is sown a natural 
body, it is raised a spiritual body.'' Of this we 
may be positive, that our little ones will he 
raised up in all the perfection of their redeemed 
nature ; neither too young nor too old to fulfil to 
the best purpose the end of their creation and 
redemption ; and precisely to this inquiry I think 



48 THE BUEIED NATIONS 

we may apply the words of the prophet Isaiah, 
at the close of his prophecy, and with express 
reference to the '^new heavens and the new 
earth": *' There shall be no more from thence an 
infant of days, or an old man that hath not filled 
his days"; which I understand to mean that all 
things will be in their prime, and in due and 
symmetrical proportions, and nothing appear de- 
formed or ruinous ; as contrasted with the transi- 
tory, evanescent and unsatisfactory form and 
manner of things as they now are with us. As 
I have repeatedly remarked, these predictions of 
the old prophets, and of Isaiah especially, are 
pictures, rather than descriptions, of things to 
come in that new world for which, according to 
his promise, we wait; drawn in the familiar forms 
and the vivid coloring of the life that now is ; as 
in fact the prophet himself says: ^^The former 
things shall not be remembered, nor come into 
mind" (vr. 17); or as John says in reference to 
the same period: *^The former things (or order 
of things) have passed away.^^ Rev. 21:4. The 
words of the great evangelical prophet do not 
mean, as I understand (but some have vainly 
imagined), that infants then will either be born 
or die, or that hoary-headed sinners will be found 
in that land of heavenly promise ; nor the lion eat 
straw like the ox, and bears, and calves, and 



or THE INFANT DEAD. 49 

serpents, and adders, and cockatrices (any more 
than hoary-headed sinners), Kve in loving com- 
panionship with httle children; nor yet drome- 
daries and swift beasts serve us for rapid travel, 
nor ships of Tarshish, to bring God's people from 
distant lands; nor yet *Uhe flocks of Kedar and 
the rams of Nebayoth'' go up again on the sacri- 
ficial altar of the God of Israel. The ^^literalisf 
interpreter of the ancient prophecies of ^^good 
things to come" will, if self-consistent, do well 
to inquire how these particular breeds of sheep 
are to be found (or if found, how identified), to 
renew again the sacrifices of ancient times; or 
whether we are in fact to abandon our modern 
modes of travel and traffic, in order to fulfil to 
the letter the predictions of the ancient seers ; 
who saw in vision, and described ^^ the good things 
to corae,^^ in the only forms that they could speak 
them, or their hearers could understand them. 
The prophet availed himself of the best figures 
within his reach and knowledge, to set forth to 
his contemporaries some faint idea of the *' glory, 
honor and peace" in reserve for the people of 
God, in the days of their coming redemption and 
deliverance from all evil ; and indeed, I am sure 
that in the great hereafter,"^ and in the light of 

* It seems to me a pity that our English translators do 
not sometimes retain this expressive term which occurs 51 



50 THE BURIED NATIONS 

the wondrous reality, all our own ideas, even 
the best of them, will appear weak and childish; 
just as the apostle says in reference to himself : 
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I 
understood as a child, I thought as a child : but 
when I became a man, I put away childish 
things. For now we see as in a mirror, darkly ; 
but then, face to face : now I know in part ; but 
then, I shall know even as I also am known/' 
1 Cor. 13:19, 11. 

Speaking once of these things with a Christian 
brother, who was passionately fond of a dear 
babe he had lost, he replied: "Yes, but I want 
MY BABY back!'' and many others I find feel the 
same way. We may wisely entrust to the wis- 
dom and love of God the "bringing of our babies 
back," no less real than before, but perfected in 
a way that shall infinitely transcend our highest 
thought. I quite satisfied and silenced my friend 
by patting his youngest, a bright and beautiful 
girl of 17 months, on the head and saying : "If 
a deep and unnatural slumber should seal the 
eyes of this bright babe, and hold her fast in its 
embrace for 25 years, till her brothers and sisters 
were grown to be men and women, married and 
with families of their own, and you should live 

times in our Hebrew Bibles, and means literally ''th^ 
he;rkaft^r " ; a great hereafter for the people of God, 



OP THE INFANT DEAD. 51 

to see your Isabel wake up, and your '* baby 
come back," a babe in face and form and mind, 
would it not break your heart to look into the 
infantine face, and think of her 25 years worse 
than lost ? We may be right sure that under the 
tuition and guidance of the angels of God, who 
have borne them away to glory, they will lose 
no time nor training for their great hereafter. 
Of these heavenly messengers, the apostle has 
written : ^^Are they not all ministering spirits 
sent forth to minister for them that shall be heirs 
of salvation ^^^ Heb. 1:14. As we know by the 
express teaching of our Lord, that one of their 
ministries, singly or jointly, is to bear away the 
souls of such, when they have finished their mor- 
tal career, we need no further revelation to 
assure us that when they have borne away these 
untaught souls to glory, they do not leave them 
there to make the best shift they can for them- 
selves. No doubt the little ones get infinitely 
better nursing and training there than we could 
ever give them here. And then, just to deepen 
the impression, think of the infinite multitude 
that have gone, and are ever going up from the 
homes of pagans, and Mohammedans, and Jews, 
and infidels, and *' agnostics," and atheists, and 
of the utterly worldly who **care for none of 
these things," and raise their families the same 



52 THE BUBIED NATIONS 

way; — those who are going up from the homes 
of abject poverty, from the abodes of vice, and 
ignorance, and wickedness, from the dens of 
thieves, and the haunts qi infamy and prostitu- 
tion; from the filthy hovels of darkest Africa, 
from the naked savages of the South Seas, and 
from the idolatrous and starving millions of 
India and China — up, up, to be safely kept 
there, and ''prepared aforehand unto" the great 
coming day of glory, and of " the grace that is to 
be brought unto us at the revelation (or appear- 
ing) of Jesus Christ '' (1 Pet. 1 : 13) . Think of it, 
as fact, and not fiction ; and join with the apos- 
tles in exclaiming: *'0h the depth of the riches 
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How 
unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways 
past finding outi'' Rom. 11:33. 

I suppose that it is as common as it is natural 
for people in easy and comfortable circumstances 
to feel that our little ones lose something in being 
deprived of the opportunity of acquiring a charac- 
ter and experience of their own down here, and 
^* enjoying life,^ before they are carried away to 
a better world — if after the risky experiment of 
a probationary life in a world of sin, they really 
"choose the good part," and finally reach heaven. 
I too used to think thus; but I have changed 
completely my mind about it, and believe that 
the voice which John heard from heaven saying: 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 53 

^^Blessed are the dead who die in the Lordj^^ after 
having made the perilous voyage of hfe, is never 
so gloriously true as when they *' die in the Lord '' 
(as our babies do) without any experience of 
what life means to us. When we consider how 
much more there is of evil than of good in the 
best of us, and that the man who had done the 
most for God and for humanity of any since the 
days of Moses, counted himself as ^'the chief of 
sinners," we may well account those "heirs of 
salvation" who "enter into life" without one 
stain or scar of actual transgression, as supreme- 
ly blessed I And if the holy Isaiah esteemed "all 
our righteousnesses as filthy rags," and if Paul 
rated "his own righteousness which is of the 
law" as refuse vile, in comparison of "the excel- 
lency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord" 
(Phil. 3:8), then certainly that infinite multitude 
of little ones who are "made partakers of Jesus 
Christ," and of his righteousness, without risk 
or struggle of their own, and enter on their ca- 
reer of endless blessedness, as if they had been 
born children of a sinless Adam, and of an 
unbroken covenant, ought surely to be regarded 
as of all the children of men the most blest.* 



* Of them, thrice blessed, none wiU ever sing- 
** Once they went mourning here below, 
and wet their couch with tears ; 
they wrestled hard, as we do now, 
with sins and doubts and fears.*' 



54 THE BUBIED NATIONS 

When we think what we ourselves are, and how 
the character and hves of the best of us are 
marked and scarred by a hfetime of imperfections 
and sins, we may rate them as favored indeed 
whom the Lord Jesus takes to himself as the 
especial purchase of his blood, without a stain or 
a trace of sins repented of and blotted out, to 
" put his law in their inward parts, and write it 
in their hearts " — as on clean tablets made ready 
by his grace; and watches over their tender 
frames, planted in the dust, as the seed-corn of 
a harvest of immortality ; ^* sown in corruption, 
raised in incorruption ; sown in dishonor, raised 
in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; 
sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body" 
(1 Cor. 15:42-44), — a material body, but none 
the less '^a spiritual body." The animating 
principle y and not the material form and sub- 
stance, is what the apostle refers to by the terms 
'^natural" and '^spiritual"; the same thing that 
makes now the only difference between men 
^'carnal" and ^'spiritual" in this present life; 
and of which the same apostle says: **If the 
Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead 
dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the 
dead shall give life to your mortal bodies also 
by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." Rom. 8 : 11. 
Why then should we wish to see our ^^ babies," 



OF THE INFAITT DEAD. ^5 

as babies, in the future life, any more than our 
aged and decrepit sires and grandsires, as such ? 
We may certainly, and without effort, trust to 
the infinite wisdom and power of God to perfect 
the work of our redemption, which he has at 
such cost to himself and his beloved Son begun. 
Thus we have proven, I think, that of the 
world's estimated population of 1500 millions, 
1000 millions or more will fill infant graves, with 
a much larger proportion in ages past ; using the 
term infant to designate children under the age 
of personal accountability — whatever that may 
be.* Just to think of it I However strait the 

* That age, whatever it be, must vary under different 
circumstances, in the same country, and town and family; 
and much more when we compare one country, age and 
civilization with another. And yet it is to be borne in 
mind that in heathen and unevangelized lands, the infant 
mind takes lessons in filth and wickedness which would 
seem unbelievable to us, born and bred in a Christian 
land. I heard my sainted wife more than once say that 
the children of seven and eight years, down there, ^^knew 
more than their grandmothers would be supposed to know 
at home." And that was a nominally Christian land. 
This is a point the decision of which appertains alone to 
** Him whom God has appointed Judge of quick and 
dead " ; and we may be very sure that, relating as it does 
to the purchase of his own blood, he will extend the 
bounds of his mercy to include the largest possible num- 
ber of those who may be * ' accounted worthy to obtain 
that world, and the resurrection from among the dead," 
Luke 29 : 35. 



56 THE BURIED NATIONS 

gate, and however narrow the way of Ufe, and 
however few there be that find it, — incomparably 
more now than ever before in this world's sad 
history — there has been from the beginning,pos- 
sihly antedating the martyrdom of ^fteZ, an im- 
mense and ever increasing throng of Uttle ones, 
pouring day and night into the ample bosom of 
God's love, and of his special gracious care; and 
of these Jesus has said : "Of such is the king- 
dom of God " ! An intelligent physician and lead- 
ing citizen of Brooklyn, N. Y., has told me that 
two "thirds of the children born, would not be 
too high a proportion now ; and that in the sad 
history of this lost world, three-fourths would 
be a reasonable proportion of those who die before 
the age of personal accountability. Who would 
have thought it, that the proportion of the race 
of the Sinner Adam who in all the ages of the 
world '^ have sinned after the similitude of Adam^s 
transgression,^^ (including both those who have 
*'died in their sins" and those who have been 
" saved from sin" through ''the grace and kind- 
ness of God our Savior"), is probably not more 
THAN ONE-FOURTH OF THE WHOLE ! And what an 
exhibition does it make to us of " the exceeding 
sinfulness of sin," that since Christ's aton- 
ing work on Calvary's Cross was ''finished" 

THREE-FOURTHS OF THIS ONE FOURTH, even in OUr 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 57 

nominal Christendom, have dehberately chosen 
the broad and easy road that goes down to death ! 
If apology or excuse be ever required for God'f? 
gracious and sovereign election of some to eternal 
life, let him who asks it look this undisputed 
and indisputable fact in the face, and find it there. 
If mankind did not universally and persistently 
ELECT FOR DEATH, God would have been spared 
the necessity of electing any to eternal life; and 
he begins with the elect class op infants 
DYING IN INFANCY. He could not, I take it, elect 
all ; for sin can only be known by its fruits, and 
cannot be repented of and forsaken except in its 
real character ; so that sin that does not damn, is 
not sin, any more than is fire fire that does not 
burn, or poison poison that does not kill. ^^Elect 
Infants^^ stand first on the list; and we know 
them as such, because they die! It is God^s great 
ordinance of Infant Salvation* 

Is There, or Was There Ever, a Place 
of Detention (a * Prison ') for the 
Sainted Dead? 

But even at this late hour of our discussion, I 
apprehend that some one may insist that what- 
ever may be true in our day, and ever since the 
great Sacrifice of Calvary was consummated, it 
was not thus before that time; because the 



58 THE BUKIED NATIONS 

apostle expressly says that "the way into the 
holiest of all was not yet made manifest while as 
yet the first Tabernacle (or its equivalent, the 
Temple) was yet standing." Heb. 9:8. He cer- 
tainly does ; but we have before asserted that 
there is no room nor standing in Scripture for 
the Romish doctrine of LimbOy any more than 
for that of Purgatory, which had in that of Limbo 
its origin and root ; and we reaffirm it here. The 
fact that the way was not manifest till after the 
death and resarrection of Christ, does not imply 
that it was not in fact open before. The way was 
open (however little "manifest" it may have 
been) "through the blood of the everlasting cov- 
enant," that of " the Lamb slain from the foun- 
dation of the worldy^^ as I have shown on page 
25; and its virtue to "cleanse from all sin" 
such as "walk in the light as he is in the light" 
(1 John 1:7), was retroactive as well as pros- 
pective. So then of necessary consequence, a 
place was found prepared for them, the expect- 
ant heirs of salvation, in heaven itself, in some 
one or other of those "many mansions" which 
our Savior speaks of in John 14 : 2 ; and though 
"the way was not yet manifest^^ to saints on 
earth, the angels who stood round their dying 
beds, no better perhaps than that of the beggar 
Lazarus, would not be at any loss to which of 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 59 

them to bear away their precious burden, without 
stopping on the way as a semi-paganized Christ- 
ianity would fain teach) to ascertain by a partic- 
ular or individual judgment, what to do with it. 
God (it would seem) appoints to each soul its 
place at death, and it goes there without question 
or dispute. See Acts 1 : 25 and 7 : 59. The Bible 
recognizes and speaks no other judgment but 
that of the quick and dead at the last day '(the 
" particular or individual judgment" is something 
we have borrowed from the papal Church, and it, 
from the pagan mythology) and it teaches the ex- 
istence of no such place of detention for souls as 
'* Limbo," or as Purgatory, for days, months or 
years, to serve out their sentence there ; such as 
Romish theology has invented. ^^The souls of 
believers are at their death made perfect in holi- 
ness (in nothing else), and do immediately pass 
into gloryy^ says the Westminster Shorter Cate- 
chism; "but their bodies, being still united to 
Christ, do rest in their graves till the resur- 
rection," Q. 37. 

'• Preaching to the Spirits in Prison." 

1 Peter 3 : 19, 20 presented no such difficulties 
to the first readers of Peter's writings as it does 
to us, to whom ages of medieval darkness and 
'* wresting of the Scriptures" have buried the 



60 THE BUEIED NATIONS 

truth under a vast accumulation of human tra- 
ditions. The disciples of Peter and of Paul were 
in no danger of understanding that '* flesh and 
spirit " meant '' body and soul^^ with Paul's 
words before their eyes : '* they that are in the 
flesh cannot please God; hut ye are not in the 
flesh but in the spirit^ if so be that the Spirit of 
God dwell in you.^^ Rom. 8 : 8, 9. And as the 
Greek word zoopoieo^ is nowhere applied except 
to the ^^ quickening ^^ either of the physically or 
the spiritually dead, they well knew that it could 
not apply to Christ at all, except in respect of the 
giving life to his dead body on the third day. 
Whatever difficulties, therefore, the passage of 
itself presented, or presents, this much was un- 
mistakably plain to the apostle's contemporaries, 
to wit, that Christ was put to death in the mortal 
flesh on a Friday — in our fallen, Adamic physi- 
cal nature which he assumed as his own, and 
was made alive in the spiritual and renewed phys- 
ical nature, which he redeemed for us in his own 
person, on a Sunday, without an allusion even to 
what happened in the disembodied state. And in 

* The Johns Hopkins Professor of Greek assured me 
that zoopoieo has no such third sense as Thayer gives it, 
fitting it to this particular case (the disembodied soul of 
Christ)—'* to endue with new and greater powers of life'' \ 
for ** quickening * ' in a spiritual sense, the LXX always 
uses zao. 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 61 

this renewed nature of his, '* the spirit," *^ he 
went and preached to the spirits in prison^^ — not 
disembodied spirits, by the nature of the case ; 
but *' the prisoners of hope," in the natural 
body, to whom he was sent, as he himself says, 
" to preach deliverance to the captives, and the 
opening of the prison to them that are bound." 
Luke 4 : 18 and Isa. 61 : 1. Paul also says that 
"having reconciled us to God by his cross," ^^he 
came and preached peace to them that were afar 
off, and to them that were nigh." Eph. 2 : 16, 17. 
Peter says ''he went and preached," Paul that 
"he came and preached"; but in both cases it 
was the risen Christ who did the preaching, "with 
the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," by 
those whom he sent forth to preach repentance 
and remission of sins in his name among all 
nations. As also this same Peter preached to 
the wondering multitudes after the day of Pente- 
cost : " Unto you first, God having raised up his 
Son Jesus y sent him to bless you, in turning away 
every one of you from his iniquities." Acts 3 : 26. 
As to the remaining part of this difficult passage 
— "the spirits that sometime (or in former time) 
were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of 
God waited in the days of Noah, when the ark 
was preparing," etc., it will be sufficient to say 
(since an exposition would be out of place here) 



62 THE BUEIED NATIONS 

that Peter makes no reference to lost souls, yet 
accessible to the offer of salvation, but to A class 
OF PERSONS of all others most disobedient and 
unbelieving, who for 120 years successfully re- 
sisted the preaching of Noah, and at last perished 
in the waters : he speaks of them not as individ- 
uals, but as a class; just like the ^^ prisoners of 
hope " whom Zechariah bids " turn to the strong- 
hold" (Zech. 9:12); and the prisoners and cap- 
tives to whom Jesus said it was his appointed mis- 
sion to preach '' deliverance,^^ ^^ liberty " and 
" opening of the prison.^^ Isa. 4:2:7 ; 61 : 1, and 
Luke 4:18. To deduce the doctrine of future 
probation from such a text is preposterous ; — 
Noah preached for 120 years, with the ark for 
his pulpit, and the hammer in his hand, with 
such signal ill-success that he did not save one ; 
Peter preached in the name of a risen Savior who 
" once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust," 
with such notable success that in one day 3000 
^^ prisoners ^^ of the same ^^ disobedient^^ class 
turned to God, and were baptized in the name of 
the Crucified One. 

The way, then, into the holiest of all, was not 
yet made manifest in the ancient times, and it is 
not yet made manifest to the truly godly in the 
Romish Church; who consequently are "all their 
lifetime subject to the bondage" of fear: but that 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 63 

did not consign the ancient saints to *^ Limbo" 
when they died, any more that the present ob- 
scuration of that open way, by the false teaching 
of their ^^bhnd guides," sends the latter to pur- 
gatory instead of heaven, in this twentieth century 
of grace. See Note on *'01d Testament Eschatol- 
ogy," on page 59 of my '* Studies on the Book of 
Genesis." 

The lamentable determination of the majority 
of the American Company of the Revisers of the 
Bible, as against the better judgment of the Eng- 
lish Company, to transfer, rather than translate, 
the words ^^sheol" and ^^ hades," of the original 
Hebrew and Greek, instead of lighting up the 
mysterious subject of death and the hereafter, is 
I think misleading in the extreme, and has shed 
darkness on the pathway of multitudes, which 
Christ by his death and resurrection had lighted 
up for us, ^^ bringing life and immortality to light 
through the Gospel." See Note 27, on /^Sheol" 
and *^ Hades" in my Studies on Genesis, page 
430. I think it is there plainly shown that the 
manner in which " death and hades " are used 
and inseparably associated in the Greek text of 
Rev. 1 : 18 ; 6:8, and 20 : 14, proves conclusively 
that as death is not a material thing, but only 
the absence of life, so also its correlative hades 
is not a material place at all^ but only the state 



64 THE BURIED NATIONS 

OF DEATH — the psychological condition of souls 
separate from the body; a mode of soul-life of 
which we know absolutely nothing, and are in- 
capable of forming even a proper conception ; for 
which cause God has told us next to nothing 
about it, except that it is a state (not a place) of 
conscious happiness or misery. To conceive, then, 
as is often done, of disembodied souls as being, 
like ^'angels or spirits," organized human beings, 
capable of any or every manner of work or mis- 
sion — as in Roman Catholic mythology — is a 
wild and sinful extravagance : any extravagance 
in such matters is sinful. Jesus and ^Hhe dying 
thief were both in hades when they died, 
because they were both out of the body ; yet we 
have our Savior's word for it, that they were 
both [^ in Paradise^^ together that same day. 
Luke 23 : 43. Jesus left him in hades on the 
third day, when he rose from the dead ; and forty 
days later was with him again in Paradise 
(which the Scripture repeatedly assures us is 
only another name for heaven, 2 Cor. 11 : 2, 4, 
and Rev. 2:7), he in the body and the other out 
of it. The subject is deep and mysterious ; but 
of this the apostle gives us the delightful cer- 
tainty, that while we are at home in the body, we 
are absent from the Lord (Jesus); while to be 
absent from the body is to be present with the 
Lord — **to depart and be with Christ, which is 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 65 

very far better" (2 Cor. 5:8, and Phil. 1:23); 
and the ascending Savior is said expressly to 
have ^^ passed through the heavens^^ (Heb. 4:14) 
and to have ^^ ascended up far above all heavens^ 
Eph. 4:10. 

With this map and chart of unseen worlds be- 
fore him, I think that '^the believer" in God and 
in his holy word, may "cross fhe bar" and "put 
out to sea" with a far more delightful certainty 
of where he is going, than the man who takes 
passage for Europe on one of our great Atlantic 
liners, pays for his passage, and takes possession 
of his stateroom, in hopes that he will have a 
safe and prosperous voyage. And to know that 
Christ is also gathering our dying babes to him- 
self, together with infinite multitudes of other 
such besides, whose souls are as precious to him 
as are those of our own flesh and blood, all of 
whom he " will bring with him " in the coming 
day of his glory and his power, is surely enough 
to make us "glory in tribulations also, and 
rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Rom. 5 : 2, 3. 

Deductions. 

From the foregoing discussion I think we may 
safely assume as proven the following proposi- 
tions : — 

1. That consequent upon the fall and ruin of 



66 THE BTJEIED NATIONS 

Adam and his posterity, God planned to re-people 
earth (not heaven), — this world which he had 
created for himself and not for his foes, for a 
paradise and not a graveyard^ — with a holy, 
happy and redeemed race of immortals, lost in 
Adam, but ransomed and recovered from the 
power and dominion of Satan, and ^* created anew 
in Christ Jesus unto good works" and holy 
living. 

2. That with a view to this, throughout all the 
ages of the sad past of this world's history, and 
down to the present time, '^ God has been visiting 
the nations (as James expressed it in Acts 15:14), 
to take out of them a people for his name"; who 
are to re-people '* the earth which he hath given 
to the children of men (Ps. 115:16); — a posses- 
sion which neither sin nor Satan will be allowed 
to take away from them; a race of immortals 
who shall sin no more, sigh no more, hunger no 
more, thirst no more, weep no more, war no 
more, die no more ; and by whom the will of Gody 
in the great hereafter, is to ^' be done on earth, 
even as it is in heaven^\' as Christ bids us daily 
pray it soon may be, when God's kingdom 
SHALL COME. Matt 6 : 10. 

3. That this coming Kingdom of righteousness 
and life eternal will consist of two great divisions: 
First, "them that by patient continuance in well 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 67 

doing seek for glory, honor and immortality," to 
whom the Righteous Judge will award ^' eternal 
life," ^4n the day when God shall judge the secrets 
of men by Jesus Christ, according to PauFs Gos- 
pel" (Rom. 2 : 13-16); and therefore, on the one 
hand, God ^* calls men by the Gospel to the ob- 
taining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ" 
(2 Thes. 2:14), and on the other, ^^ he com- 
mands ALL MEN, EVERYWHERE to repent, because 
he hath appointed a Day — the day of his glorious 
Kingdom — in w^hich he will judge the world in 
righteousness by that man whom he hath or- 
dained — giving assurance of this unto all men, 
in that he hath raised him from the dead." Acts 
17:30, 31. This class, those who believe and 
obey the glad tidings, have in all the ages of the 
past, and down to the present day, been and 
are but ^^ pew," compared with the vast throng of 
those who persistently and resolutely crowd the 
broad road that leads to death ; revealing thus, as 
nothing else can, '^the exceeding sinfulness of 
sin" and the ^^ desperate wickedness" of the 
apostate heart of mankind, who even in a Christ- 
ian land, and under the full blaze of Gospel light, 
had rather (as multitudes yet do) live and die in 
their sins, and take all risks, than *'take 
Christ's yoke, and learn of him, and find rest to 
their souls/' in the certainty of peace with God 



68 THE BURIED NATIONS 

now, and glory and eternal life with Christ here- 
after ; fulfilling thus his own word : ^^ They have 
both seen and hated both me and my Father." 
John 15 : 24. 

The second great division consists of the vast 
and incomparably greater number, who get the 
Kingdom without seeking it ; the little ones who 
in all ages of the world and out of all nations and 
tribes and peoples, 'Hhat cannot discern their 
right hand from their left" (on whom God had 
so much pity in Nineveh, Jon. 4:11), together 
with those of larger growth who died before 
reaching the age of personal accountability, — 
" such as have not sinned after the similitude of 
Adam^s transgression ^'^^ Rom. 5 : 14. These will 
so immensely exceed the numbers of the former 
class, that the adult sinners who repent of sin, 
and believe and obey the Gospel, will seem but a 
handful in the comparison ; while the finally im- 
penitent who now crowd the broad road of sin 
and death, however so many they be, will be a 
vast minority as contrasted with the Infant Dead 
*^ of whom is the Kingdom of God." In the light 
of these truths, our faith is greatly clarified and 
confirmed in the prophetic word : '^ He shall see of 
the travail — agonies of childbirth — of his soul, 

AND SHALL BE SATISFIED." Isa. 53 : 11. 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 69 

And I cannot help feeling that just as the help- 
less wailings of infancy, on the one hand, and the 
innocent prattle of our babes on the other, appeal 
to and awaken the deepest interest and sympathy 
of all right-minded men and women, so also their 
present and future condition awakens the liveliest 
concern and deepest love of our God and of his 
holy angels. Jesus clearly teaches that so incom- 
parably high is the esteem in which they are held 
in heaven (though little regarded on earth), that 
he himself said to his disciples, and yet says to 
us: ^^ Take heed that ye despise not one of these 
httle ones ; for I say unto you that in heaven 
their angels [not their departed souls, as some 
thoughtlessly interpret] — their (guardian) angels 
do always behold the face of my Father which is 
in heaven.^' Matt. 18: 19. Which plainly teaches 
us, emphasized with his own precious "I say 
UNTO you," that the heavenly guardians of this 
privileged, but dependent or helpless class, stand 
high, as such, in the ranks of those whom God 
admits to his immediate presence in glory. The 

GUAKDIAN ANGELS OP THE BABES, twO-thirds, Or 

three-fourths, of whom, as we have seen, in every 
land and nation take this short cut to heaven! 
Little wonder, therefore, it is that he is so often 
unwilhng to entrust to our unskilful hands 



70 THE BURIED NATIOlSrS 

the unnumbered and innumerable millions, who 
in man's erring judgment would seem to have 
been conceived in vain, and born to no purpose; 
and yet in the inscrutable wisdom and unchal- 
lengeable love of God, they are thus snatched as 
a prey from the teeth of ^^ the Devouring Lion," 
and borne on angels' wings to glory; while their 
tender, mortal frames, sown in mortality, weak- 
ness and dishonor, lie buried in the earth as 
seed-corn for Chrisfs coming harvest of incor- 
ruption, power and glory! 

All these, guarded by angels, under the per- 
sonal superintendence of *The Great Shepherd of 
Israel," await in glory, honor and peace *Hhe Day 
of Redemption," and of ^Hhe Resurrection of the 
Just"; till he shall say, in the Day of the great 
Assembly, *^ when they shall come from the east, 
and the west, and the north and the south, and 
sit down in the kingdom of God" (Luke 13 : 29): 
'* Of those that thou gavest me, I have lost 
nothing!" For he tells us explicitly : ''I came 
down from heaven, not to do my own will, but 
the will of him that sent me. And this is the 
will of him that sent me, that of all that which he 
hath given me I should lose nothing, but should 
raise it up again [to life eternal] at the last day." 
John 6: 38, 39. 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 71 

Has God Any Special Purpose in Vie^v 
for These Little Ones, So Dear to 
Him, and Whose Very Guardian 
Angels Stand So High in Heaven? 

But it is time for us to inquire what is to 
become of these incalculably vast multitudes of 
the Infant Dead, and whether (without indulging 
in vain and unprofitable speculation about things 
which God has wisely concealed from us), we 
may not find out and co-ordinate, for our comfort 
and hope, a little that he has made plain to the 
knowledge and belief of those who ^^ search the 
Scriptures," in order to ''know the things that 
are freely given us of God." Are we to suppose, 
as so many seem to believe, that they are simply 
^^saved,^^ and then turned loose in heaven, and 
lost in the indiscriminate multitudes of saints and 
angels? That would almost be to lose our 
children, sure enough ! Or are they saved, and 
safe, in heaven now, and then raised up at the 
last day to *' life which is life indeed " (R. V. 
Tim. 6: 19), not only as individuals, but as the 
representatives of the nations, races, peoples and 
tribes to which they belong? The calamity is 
that under the influence of the prevailing semi- 
Sadduceism of the day, we too much direct our 
inquiries upon the disembodied spirits of our 
dead, instead of '^ hoping to the end, for the grace 



72 THE BURIED NATIONS 

that is to be brought unto us at the appearing of 
Jesus Christ." 1 Pet. 1 : 13. So Jesus said to 
Martha, the weeping sister of Lazarus : ^* Thy 
brother shall rise again T^ and Paul wrote, for 
the comfort of saints in their bereavements : '* I 
would not have you ignorant brethren, concerning 
them that are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as 
others who have no hope; for if we believe that 
Jesus died and rose again, even so them that sleep 
in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we 
say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we 
wliich are alive and remain unto the coming of 
the Lord shall not prevent — or get the start of — 
them that are asleep. For the Lord himself shall 
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice 
of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and 
the dead in Christ shall rise first ; then we which 
are alive and remain, shall be caught up with 
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; 
and so we shall be ever with the Lord. Where- 
fore COMFORT ONE ANOTHER WITH THESE 

WORDS." 1 Thes. 4: 13-18. The modern 
rationalistic school will tell us that the apostle 
gave utterance to this form of consolation, under 
the belief that the day of the Lord was immediate ; 
a misimpression against which he guards them in 
his Second Epistle, written soon after ; so that his 
words of consolation were just as opportune if 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 73 

the Lord should long delay his personal coming, 
as if he were to come in that same generation ; 
and therefore as opportune to us as to them. 
And in point of fact, the semi-infidel allegation 
lies as heavily against our Lord himself as against 
his apostle, as already said in the footnote to 
page 9. For Jesus himself expressly guards us 
against *^ saying at any time : My Lord delay eth 
his coming; and so that day come upon us 
at unawares ; for as a snare shall it come on all 
them that dwell on the face of the whole earth." 
Luke 12: 45 and 21 : 34. It was our Lord's 
solemn purpose, as we have already said, that his 
people should fix their eyes and their hopes on 
his personal return from heaven, in power and 
glory, and be **as servants that wait for their 
lord, when he shall return from the wedding" 
(Luke 12: 35-40), making the certainty of the 
event coordinate with the uncertainty of the time. 
The fact that the Church in general, in spite of 
his plain and reiterated charges, have settled it in 
their hearts that our Lord will not come for a very 
long time yet (or perhaps has changed his mind 
about it), lies unquestionably at the bottom of 
the worldliness and self-indulgence of the professed 
people of God, in a world that is perishing in its 
sins.* As said before, there is no deception or 
* The attitude of the professed Christian Church in our 



74 THE BURIED NATIONS 

misleading in the belief and teaching that the 
Lord is liable to come any day in the year, or any 
year in the calendar; for the incomparable great- 
ness of that event is such, that it does not matter 
practically the turn of a hand whether at his 
coming he wake us from our beds or from our 
graves. And meantime, if we die, we wait with 
Christ in glory, while he waits, till his foes be 
made his footstool. So ^^the foolishness of God 
is wiser than men." A wakeful and watching 

day is so strikingly set forth in the following characteristic 
anecdote of the great Rev. Dr. Robt, J. Breckenridge, of 
Kentucky, that though verging on the profane, the reader 
may well pardon its insertion here. I give it as it was 
given to me. The venerable *' Father Barnes '* of the same 
State, a man greatly beloved and revered, was a flaming 
Premillennarian, and not always as prudent, perhaps, as 
was to be desired in one holding tenaciously to Second 
Advent views held by few of his brethren, and outside of 
the recognized Church doctrine. But he presented it so 
persistently, that some of the members of his Presbytery 
got thoroughly tired of it, and preferred charges against the 
old saint for heresy. Dr. Breckenridge who held similar 
views, happened to be a member of the same Presbytery, 
and ** Father Barnes" got him to undertake his defence. 
When the case was brought up, the eagle-eyed Ken* 
tuckian stood up, and spoke somewhat to this effect : 
'* Moderator, there are three views widely spread in our 
day on this great subject. First, There are a few of us 
who regard the coming of our Lord as of all events the 
most auspicious, and we labor, and hope and pray that it 
come soon ; we may not always be as wise and discreet as 
is to be desired ; but we sincerely **love the Lord's ap- 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 75 

Church, is what the Lord desired above all things 
to have in the midst of a perishing world, and what 
the Adversary has been most concerned through- 
out all the Gospel age, and down to the present 
day, to prevent; and perhaps now more than 
ever before, as we see the day approaching. 

Jesus did not tell the weeping sisters of Lazarus 
to dry up their tears, for that their brother was 
gone to heaven ; nor did Paul tell the philosophers 
of Athens that ^^ God commandeth all men, every- 

pearing," and as Peter says, ** look for and hasten unto it.'* 
Then secondly ^ there is the great body of godly and sin- 
cerely pious persons, who believe that the Lord will come 
some day or other but it is so very far off, and so far 
removed from us individually, that they needn^t bother 
themselves one way or the other about it. Then, thirdly 
Sir, there is the great mass, the rank and file of the 
professed Christian Church, who don't carej a cuss 
vi^HKTHKR he: EVKR comks OR NOT ! ' ' Breckenridge cleared 
his client. 

The prevailing idea of people all over the Christian 
world seems more and more to be, that ** if we get safely 
home to heaven," it matters little how long Christ may 
delay to come ; or for that matter, whether he ever come 
at all ; and if in the end there should be no resurrection 
of the body, and no personal Advent of Christ we get 
" salvation " enough without it. The same is practically 
true of Roman Catholics, except that the one great concern 
with them is to get out of purgatory into heaven. But 
what sort of * * saving faith ' ' is that which cuts the 
Bible doctrine of ** salvation" right in two, and practi- 
cally sets aside the half of Christ's testimony, as un- 
deserving of serious regard ? 



76 THE BUEIED NATIONS 

where to repent," because they were hable to die 
at any moment, *'and after death the judgment," 
true as that is ; but, ^'because he hath appointed a 
day in the which he will judge the worldy in 
righteousness, by that Man whom he hath 
ordained ; whereof he hath given assurance unto 
all men, in that he hath raised him from the 
deadJ^ Acts 17: 30, 31. The standing and 
legitimate consolation for us, *^ concerning them 
that are asleep," whether our babes or our fathers, 
is that '^ them that sleep in Jesus God will bring 
with him,^^ when he comes to raise the dead, and 
judge the world in righteousness ; giving to his 
enemies their due reward, and to his people the 
promised heritage of '^ glory, honor and peace." 
See 1 Thes. 1 : 8-10, already quoted on page 8. 
Not glorified spirits, but resurrected and glorified 
men, is evermore ^Hhe hope of the Gospel," unto 
which we are called ; which, if I am not wholly 
in error, has been only darkened by the half 
dozen or more theories Christian men have 
formed with reference to ^^ The Millennium";* in 

* The latest and most dangerous of these MiUennial 
theories, and undoubtedly the most popular among the 
*' neglecters of the great salvation," for whom neither 
Paul nor his Master saw any way of '* escape,*' is what has 
been aptly called **Russellism," or *' Millennial Dawnism;" 
which by an ingenious amalgamation of selected parts of 
the tenets of the *' Soul -sleepers,*' of Universalism, **Con- 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 77 

none of which the Reformers took any stock, nor 
the fathers of the Enghsh-speaking Evangehcal 
Church, till after the days of the Westminster 
Assembly, ^* Let us therefore,'' as Calvin says, 

ditional Immortality," Second Probationism and Annihila- 
tionism, in the hands of a bold and unscrupulous interpreter 
of Scripture, proposes to make easy and plain the salvation 
of the worldly and the wicked ; though given up to be a 
hopeless problem, which neither human nor divine wisdom 
could find any way to solve; — Paul asking: ''^ How shall 
we escape, if we neglect so great salvation? '' (Heb. 2:3); 
and Jesus himself asking: *' Ye serpents, ye generation of 
vipers [though the most respectable people in Jerusalem] , 
HOW CAN YEJ KSCAPK the damnation, or condemnation, of 
hell? '* Matt. 23: 33. *' Russellism '' is the newest and 
the most aggressive of all the different forms of Premillen- 
narianism. It is at the same time the newest and most 
aggressive form of the old Universalism, somewhat modi- 
fied, holding (as far as I can understand it) that the soul 
has no existence apart from the body, and that when the man 
dies, his whole being, **body, soul and spirit,'' IS DKad; 
so that the dead are really non-existent, and are neither in 
heaven, earth or hell. This, and nothing worse, was the 
penalty of Adam's sin, as it is written: **Inthe day thou 
eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. ' ' That pe;nai,Ty 
Christ (in some way or other) suffkrkd for Thf: rack; 
making thus ** the atonement for mankind,*' and saving it 
from ** death," that is, annihilation, or non-existence; 
though it does not appear how he himself came back out 
of non-existence on the third day. But any way, he 
redeemed the race from ** death," obtaining for all the 
dead the privilege of being raised up to mortal life again, 
and having (if they need it) another chance, or a second 
probation, under more favorable conditions, during **The 



78 THE BUBIED NATIONS 

" acquire a sounder judgment ; and notwithstand- 
ing the opposition of the Wind and stupid cupidity 
of our flesh, let us not hesitate ardently to desire 
the advent of the Lord, as of all events the most 



MiUennium ; ' ' and then only such as are foolish enough, or 
wicked enough, to misimprove, or to spurn, this second 
chance for eternal life, will ** perish,'* or ** die the second 
death,'* and so be *' destroyed," or annihilated, or relapse 
into a state of permanent non-existence. The Buddhists 
would perhaps call it *' Nirvana." ** Pastor Russell'* 
thinks there will be some such — a very few; and so de- 
clines for his system the name of '' Universalism.'* 

According to Mr. Russell, the loss of *'the Kingdom" 
will be penalty enough, without any *' hell," or other kind 
of future punishment,— a sentiment which all the ungodly 
and irreligious will heartily endorse, as they do not want 
^' the Kingdom of God'^ under any conditions. This 
appears to all the forgetters of God and neglecters of the 
great salvation so fair and equitable, that no grace of God, 
nor change of heart, nor renewal of the mind is necessary 
to gain their consent to the doctrine; and thus a large 
part of the secular press, that prints whatever pleases its 
patrons, lends itself readily to the propagation of errors 
which people want to read. Kvery intelligent man who 
knows anything about such matters, knows well that it is 
BiBi,K Christianity, generally accepted and fairly well 
practised, that has made our country great, prosperous, 
stable, intelligent and free. In our day, all the forms and 
forces of evil are leagued together to undo the work which 
our fathers, under God's guiding hand, accomplished. 
Russellism could never have made us what we once were, 
a God-fearing people; but it can efficiently **help forward 
the calamity," and take part in un- doing their good work. 

More than four million bound volumes of the * * Millennial 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 79 

auspicious. For he shall come to us as a Re- 
deemer, to deliver us from this bottomless gulf 
of all evils and miseries, and introduce us into 
that blessed inheritance of his life and glory." 



Dawn" series have been published within a few years, 
while its lesser publications are falling all over the country 
like autumn leaves. Mr. Russell makes the published 
statement that over 600 secular newspapers in the United 
States and Canada publish his sermons weekly [reaching, 
it is claimed, eight or ten million readers a week], which, 
he says, '' is 7iothing less than a miracle^ and proves that 
God is back of the movement.''^ To people of ^Evangelical 
belief, a simpler explanation may be found in the words of 
our Savior: "If ye were of the world, the world would 
love its own, but because ye are not of the world, but I 
have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world 
hat eth 3^ou . ' ' John 15 : 19 . 

Like all new sects and schools of opinion, the people 
are warm-hearted and zealous; they are sincere, devout 
and enthusiastic, and liberal to a remarkable degree in the 
sacrifice of their time and their worldly possessions, for 
the advancement of their doctrine. They take up no col- 
lections, and ask no contributions; yet they tell me they 
never lack for money. This, however remarkable, is not 
unexampled by the many religious orders that have for 500 
years been springing up in and out of the Roman Catholic 
Church; nor is it quite unnatural, if they hold with their 
leader and ** pastor" that October, 1914, is the probable 
date of the Second Advent of our Lord, and the setting up 
of the Millennial Kingdom, and the end of the present order 
of things. 

The bottommost trouble about Russellism is that, like 
all man-made systems of religion, it has no adequate con- 
ception of SIN, its malignity, power and deserts, none of 



80 THE BURIED NATIONS 

Institutes Book III, ch. 9, Sec. 6. Or as Peter 
exhorts, speaking by inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit: ^^ Wherefore gird up the loins of your 
mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace 
that is to be brought unto you at the revelation 
of Jesus Christ.^^ 1 Pet. 1 : 13. 

The 1000 Years' Binding of Satan. 
Rev. 20:1-10. 

To my mind, the most rational and credible 
supposition in respect to that 1000-year period of 
the binding of Satan, of which the Scriptures 
reveal to us absolutely nothing except its begin- 
ning and its ending, during which the risen 
saints shall *^ reign with Christ," is that attrib- 
uted to the late Rev. Dr. Robert J. Breckenridge, 

the justice of God [they repudiate the idea of his ''wrath "] 
and a very false one of his mercy. With it, sin is man's 
misfortune, and nothing but a better chance and a more 
favorable environment, such as *'The Millennium" will 
provide for the living and the dead alike, will be needed 
to convert a lost world into a heavenly paradise ; without 
any proper atonement for sin by Jesus Christ, or any 
washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy 
Ghost. How long this ill-jointed system will last, or how 
far it will extend, remains to be seen; nor does it greatly 
matter, if the world, or the present order of things, is to 
come to an end before the year 1915. But meanwhile, it 
will ''subvert whole houses," as Paul says of the false 
teachers of his day ; and encourage sinners to ' ' take their 
chances, '^ as they are already too much disposed to do. 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 81 

of Kentucky, to wit, that it has reference to the 
Day of Judgment^ ^Hhe last day," which hke the 
*Mays"of Creation will undoubtedly be a very 
long period ; * when Satan and his angels will no 
longer be permitted to go at large, and disturb 
the august proceedings of that day of days ; and 
the risen saints, as assessors with Christ, shall 
"judge angels'' (the fallen ones) and shall " judge 
the world" (1 Cor. 5:2,3) ; to which the apostle 
seems to refer again where he says in his Epistle 
to the Romans ch. 16: 20: "The very God of 
peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly ^\' 
and when "loosed out of his prison" (as "he 
must be for a season") and brought forth to his 
own judgment, instead of yielding submission 
to the authority of the Judge (to whom all judg- 
ment has been committed ^''^ John 5: 22-27) he will 
gather together the infinite hordes of condemned 
men and condemned angels for the last great con- 
flict between Christ and his great Adversary, in 



*The great Robert HaU, the greatest preacher of his 
generation, who had no hobbies to ride, nor any pet theories 
to advocate, said in one of four sermons he preached on 
the subject : * * The day thus designated signifies A pe;riod 

OF DURATION SEJT APART FOR THIS PURPOSE); for which 

[according to our present idea of things] one might suppose 
that an eternity would scarcely be too great, when we con- 
sider the immensity of the subject, and the multitude of the 
persons concerned." HalPs Works. Vol. IV. Sermon 40. 



82 THE BUEIED NATIONS 

^^the battle of the great day op God Almighty" 
(Rev. 16: 14 and 20:8), so often alluded to in 
the Scriptures of truth. This, which is in my 
view the most probable and self-consistent suppo- 
sition in reference to the 1000-year binding of 
Satan, and most in accord with "the analogy of 
Scripture," shows that there is nothing of which 
we have any certain knowledge that stands between 
us and the Day of the Lord's appearing; which, 
(as the late Rev. Archer Butler, of Dublin, has 
well said, by his own ordering " is possible at 
ANY day, but committed TO NONE " ; as also is 
taught expressly in the very last sentence of the 
Westminster Confession of Faith ; so that down 
through all the ages of the Christian dispensation 
the words of Peter are appropriate, reinforcing 
the frequent admonition of our Lord : ^' Seeing 
then that all these things shall be dissolved, what 
manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy 
conversation and godliness, looking for and 
hastening unto the coming [or as otherwise 
rendered, ^^ and hastening the coming^^'] of the 
DAY OF GOD, wherein the heavens being on fire 
shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt 
with fervent heat? Nevertheless, we, according to 
his promise, look for new heavens and a 
NEW EARTH, wherein dwelleth ' righteousness. 
Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 83 

things, be diligent, that ye may be found of him 
in peace, without spot and blameless^ 2 Pet. 3: 
11. Or as John presses the same plea: *' Abide 
in him, that when he shall appear, we may have 
confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his 
coming," but ^^may have boldness in the day of 
judgment; because as he was, so are we in the 
world." 1 John 2 : 28 and 4 : 17. 

Taking these things seriously, we see at a 
glance how far gone is the present day Church 
from the ancient faith and hope and practice of 
apostolic times; and how important it is that 
we brush aside all our modern theories, schemes 
and expectations which tend to put ^* that day" 
indefinitely far off, rather than indefinitely near ; 
as our Lord placed it, and would have us to put 
it. As has been said before, and it will bear 
frequent repetition, that day is so immeasurably 
great, that ^^it does not matter practically the 
turn of a hand whether the Lord at his coming 
shall wake us from our beds or from our graves^^; 
so that the supposed nearness or remoteness of that 
day has nothing to do with it, and Peter's earnest 
admonitions in 2 Pet. 3 : 11-15 were just as op- 
portune 1850 years ago to believers of that day, 
as they are ever going to be ; and are as oppor- 
tune to us as to them. '^The great Day of God 
Almighty" will be as ** great" to the dead as to 



84 THE BUKIED NATIONS 

the living: — ^Hhe judgment of this world," and 
of the Devil and his angels as well, who have 
been principally concerned in working out its 
ruin. As Peter preached to Cornelius, and his 
Gentile friends : ^' He commanded us to preach 
unto the people, and to testify that this is he who 
is ordained of God to be Judge of the quick and 
dead" (Acts 10:12); the quick, or living, no more 
than the dead, the dead no less than the living : 
a statement which is repeatedly made in Scrip- 
ture, and which in Rev. 11 : 18, is put in this 
concrete form, when the Seventh angel had 
sounded, and so, near "the time of the end": 
''And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is 
come, and the time of the dead, that they should 
be judged, and that thou shouldst give reward 
unto thy servants, the prophets, and to the saints, 
and to them that fear thy name, both small and 
great; and shouldst destroy them that des- 
troy THE EARTH." Wonderful it seems that that 
''Great Day" should occupy so little the thought 
of God's professedly believing people ; due prob- 
ably to the pernicious fiction, that each man's 
death is virtually "the coming of the Lord." 

After sixty years' study of this Millennial ques- 
tion from every point of view, I simply count the 
Millennium out (whether regarded as "pre-" or 
post-"), and allow neither the "conversion of the 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 85 

world," nor ^^the restoration of the Jews," nor 
anything else to stand between me and ^Hhat 
blessed hope" (Titus 2: 13), which will justify 
me in saying: '^ My Lord delayeth his coming !^^ 
To the Thessalonian Christians, 1850 years ago, 
the apostle Paul wrote : '^ But ye brethren, are 
not in darkness, that that day should overtake you 
as a thief:' 1 Thes. 5:4. The Lord will fulfil his 
own promises and predictions in his own way, 
and at his own time, without asking our advice. 

What Will God Do With the Nations 
of the Infant Dead? 

Having therefore cleared the ground of these 
encumbrances that abate from the force and 
opportuneness of these repeated injunctions of our 
Lord and his apostles, we come back to the case 
of ^'them that sleep in Jesus," including '^ the 
nations of the infant dead," as well as our own 
departed little ones ; of whom we have the divine 
assurance that ^^them that sleep in Jesus will 
God bring with him" ; and we repeat the inquiry 
already made, as to what special end or purpose 
God has in view for them. 

To fairly state the case is, I think, to fully 
answer the question. Out of the estimated 1500 
millions of the earth's present population, 1000 
millions, as shown on .pages 46, 56, will fill infant 



86 THE BUBIED NATIONS 

graves, if not a larger number ; so that in the 
two hundred generations of the past — 6000 years 
— it is fair to estimate that at least 100,000 
millions of the infant dead would '^ awake to 
eternal life" (Dan. 12: 2), if ^^the trumpet 
should sound and the dead be raised incorrupt- 
ible" before to-morrow's dawning light ! — in ad- 
dition to all the armies of the living God who 
have *' fought the good fight, have finished their 
course and have kept the faith." 2 Tim. 4 : 7. 
And thus Christ '^ shall see of the travail of his 
soul, AND BE SATISFIED." Isa. 53 : 11. So far 
therefore as we can see, the Lord may well 
"hasten his appearing" and come to-morrow, if 
it please him. And these 100,000 millions of the 
infant dead will rise in the very lands that gave 
them birth ! '^ Egypt and Tyre, and Greek and 
Jew," with all the nationalities of Europe, Asia, 
Africa and America, together with all the islands 
of the sea, have already furnished a hundred-fold 
more citizens to the true "commonwealth of 
Israel," and subjects of the coming Kingdom of 
the great Son of David, than ever lived contem- 
poraneously on their soil ; and surely that will be 
enough ! and so the promises of a spiritual seed to 
Abraham, " more than the stars of the heaven in 
multitude, and than the sand that is along the sea 
shore, innumerable," be fulfilled beyond human 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 87 

and angelic belief ; and all nations of white men 
and black men, olive colored and brown men, yel- 
low men and copper-colored will dwell together in 
mutual love and helpfulness, and '^the will of God 
be done on earth even as it is done in heaven"; 
and "wars cease unto the ends of the earth," and 
"none need ever say to his brother : Know the 
Lord! for all shall know him from the least of 
them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord ; 
for I will have forgiven their iniquities, and their 
sins will I remember no more!" Thus wilt the 
promises to the very letter be fulfilled, and "all 
nations come and worship before thee, O Lord," 
and "all the ends of the earth see the salvation 
of our God"; — and this "as long as the sun and 
moon endure, throughout all generations." 

My friend and brother whom I quoted on page 
50 as "wanting his baby back," demurred to the 
idea of the salvation of the Infant Dead by na- 
tionalities, and seriously doubted whether, in fact, 
there would be any nationalities among the re- 
deemed. I solved his doubts by reference to the 
words of Christ himself that " in the day of Judg- 
ment" the queen of the South would be there, 
together with the men of that generation, and con- 
demn them ; so also the men of Nineveh, and Tyre, 
and Sidon, and Capernaum, and Sodom and Go- 
morrha ; and these different nations would not 



88 THE BUEIED NATIOIfS 

appear as lost amid the indiscriminate multitude 
of sinners, but as their own proper selves, and 
that, to receive the condemnation due to their in- 
dividual deeds ; and if the parents will appear 
by nationalities, why not their infant dead? If 
the Infant Dead will rise in their own proper 
land and country, where they were born and died, 
and in their own distinct nationalities, why 
should the badge and traits of nationality be lost 
in the Day of Judgment, or as soon thereafter as 
possible? This w^hole line of argument goes to 
show that the Infant Dead will retain their dis- 
tinct nationality as much as their own distinct 
personality ; thus fulfilling in their own persons 
the promises made respecting ^^ all the ends of the 
earth" and ^'all the kindreds of the nations;" 
promises including a multitude of nations and 
peoples, known and unknown, gone and blotted 
out without leaving a relic, or even a name 
behind, and which therefore can only be fulfilled 
in the persons of their Infant Dead, more 
numerous far than ever their fathers were; 
nations and peoples of whom it is predicted that 
they in future times are to *'come and worship 
before God." For if all the nations of the modern 
world should some day become as thoroughly 
evangelized as the United States of America — of 
which there is not even a reasonable possibility 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 89 

(for all the evangelized nations of the past have 
one by one gone back on the Gospel, and there 
are not remote indications that our own is fast 
taking the same trend of things), still none 
but the most densely worldly would imagine 
that this would be fulfilling even remotely 
the promise of these predictions ; for a glance 
at our daily newspapers would satisfy the 
most credulous that as a nation we do not '^ come 
and worship before God, nor glorify his nameJ^ 
And even if we did, how would that help the case 
of the nations the Psalmist had in view — Babylon, 
and Egypt, and Assyria, and Moab, and Edom, 
and the fierce Philistines, together with the long list 
of dead nations that Ezekiel gives us in chapter 
32, who once *' caused their terror to be known in 
the land of the living^^ ? Pray when and how shall 
these, and all the ancient nations unknown to us 
even by name, — when shall these '* nations," 
long since dead and buried and forgotten, do all 
this ? — for they are gone, never more to be known 
on earth till the great Judgment Day ; — then, 
indeed, they shall all come back ! Christ himself 
answers for it, that 'Hhe queen of the South," 
the renowned Queen of Sheba, known as such, 
will be there, and 'Hhe men of Nineveh" 
will be there, and ^' Sodom and Gomorrha" will 
be there; for whom ** it shall be more tolerable 



90 THE BUBIED NATIONS 

in the day of Judgment " than for the nations and 
peoples and individuals who have heard the gospel 
only to reject it. Now these and others many 
are '^the nations," and "the ends of the 
EARTH," which the inspired writers had in mind 
when they wrote down the prediction that they all 
should " remember and turn unto the Lordy and 
all the kindreds of the nations come and worship 
before him, and glorify his name." To be 
more specific: in the 87th Psalm God says: "J 
will make mention of Egypt y and Babylon, and 
Tyre, and Philistia, and Ethiopia, " as among 
them that know me" (R. V.), of whom, both as 
individuals and nations, it will yet be said, " this 

ONE AND THAT ONE WERE BORN " IN THE POOR 

DESPISED ZiON ; a prediction and promise which 
the Sweet Psalmist of our modern Israel thus in- 
terprets and translates — the lines have been given 
before (p. 35) but will bear repetition here — 

^^Egypt and Tyre, and Greek and Jew 
shall there begin their lives anew ; 
angels and men shall join to sing 
the Hill whence living waters spring." 

No less expUcitly does the great evangehcal 
Prophet Isaiah leave this prediction on lasting 
record: ^^ In that day there shall be a highway 
out of Egypt to Assyria ; and the Assyrian shall 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 91 

come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria ; 
and the Egyptians shall serve [me] with the 
Assyrians. In that day Israel shall be the third 
with Assyria [a glorious trio !], even a blessing in 
the midst of the earth ; whom the Lord of hosts 
shall bless, saying. Blessed be Egypt my people^ 
and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel 
mine inheritance.^^ Isa. 19 : 23-25. Now when, 
where and how are these predictions of the dead 
and buried nations of antiquity to find their ful- 
filment ? Only by resurrection from the 
DEAD, surely; of which the Bible makes so 
much, and the present age of Christians so little. 
The devout and gifted author of ^'The Millennial 
Dawn," whose oracular utterances are never 
more positive than when most wrong, will tell us 
without a moment's hesitation, that it will be in 
'* The Millennium,^^ when the nations of the 
dead past, and all the ungodly of all the ages will 
have a second chance ; — this being the only pos- 
sible fulfilment for the dead of these predictions 
and promises. But as we do not accept this, 
or any other doctrine of probation, either after 
death, or after the resurrection, we bring up 
again the nations of the infant dead, as ful- 
filling the prediction and the promise in every 
particular. It is a very remarkable fact, that 
both his and all the other millennial schools of 



92 THE BTJEIED l^ATIOKS 

interpretation^ of which I have notice, completely 
overlook in their schemes of prophetical fulfilment 
the known and unknown nations of the infant 
dead; — immensely more numerous than all the 
nations and individuals that have lived and " died 
in their sins " ; and who all alike will be judged, 
710^ for the rejection of the Gospel^ which most of 
them have never heard, hut by the universal rule 

OP CONDEMNATION FOR ALL SINNERS ALIKE, 

which Christ, THE righteous Judge, lays down: 
''And this is the (universal) condemnation, 
that light is come into the world, and men have 
loved the darkness rather than the light, because 
their deeds are evil ; for every one that doeth 
evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, 
lest his deeds should be reproved. John 3 : 20. 
They all alike hate the light they have, whether 
much or little, and for this they are all alike con- 
demnable and condemned — some more, some less, 
proportionally to the much or little light they have 
abused. According to Russellism, nobody will be 
CONDEMNED in the day of judgment, plainly as 
Christ asserts the contrary ; but everybody, after 
sleeping like a stone, or in non-existence, until then, 
will come back to life, and those who need it will 
have A SECOND chance; — another trial; playing on 
the double sense of the word '' trial," so that '' the 
day of Judgment" becomes a day or time of 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 93 

second ^HriaV^ — a second probation; not out of 
the body, but in the body of sin and death raised 
up for a second chance, or trial I 

Rejecting, therefore, this unscriptural and 
groundless assumption, there remains only one 
conclusion, to wit, that the nations of the future 
— the saved nations — will chiefly consist of the 
infant dead; — out of Egypt, and Assyria, and 
Babylon, and India, and China, and Darkest 
Africa, nations known and unknown, of the past, 
the present and the future (so far as a future 
yet remains for this ruined and God-forsaking 
world), till all whose names are written in 
the Lamb's Book of Life have ^^come to repent- 
ance" (as Peter says) ; and of whom Christ says 
he is pledged that '' not one of them shall perish." 
I think that in 2 Pet. 3 : 9 the apostle means 
plainly to teach that this only holds in sus- 
pense ^^ the promise of his coming ^^ (which un- 
believers count for ^^ slackness," or remissness, 
on his part); *^not willing that any (of us) should 
perish, but that all (of us) should come to re- 
pentance" [for otherwise, as sinners perish just 
the same whether he comes or not, the longer he 
delays to come, the greater the number of those 
who do in fact perish]; according as Christ him- 
self puts it, as his divinely given commission, 
that '* Of all that the Father hath given me I 



94 THE BUKIED NATIONS 

should lose nothing^ but raise it up again (to im- 
mortal life and glory) at the last day^ John 6 : 
39. This then, Peter gives as the reason, and 
is the only reason he does give, for the Lord's seem- 
ing remissness as to the promise of his coming, 
in 2 Pet. 3:9. I take it that the hopes of Pre- 
millennarians about the nations — all nations — 
which are to ^^ come to repentance,^^ and be con- 
verted to God, in what they call ^' the Millennial 
Reign of Christ, ^^ are but a baseless and misleading 
expectation, if I, in sixty years of daily study of 
the Scriptures, have come to understand anything 
about the matter. Peter teaches iplainlj that ^^ all 
who have not then come to repentance, perish,^^ 
and therefore the Lord is patiently waiting till 
*Hhey who shall be heirs of salvation" (Heb. 
1 : 14) have all come in. So also Paul expressly 
declares in 2 Thes. 1:6-19, that when Christ 
*' shall come to be glorified in his saints," he 
will also '^ take vengeance on them that know not 
God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ,^^ In Rom. 2:8, 9, 16, he teaches identi- 
cally the same thing. What sinners, then, what 
Jews, still rejecting Christ, what Mohammedans 
or pagans will then be left remaining, to *^come 
to repentance," and "believe and obey the 
Gospel," after Christ comes? Probation surely 
ends when the '^Judgment of the quick and 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 95 

dead" begins.* Infinite multitudes will indeed 
come in that day ; but this whole argument goes 
to prove, that they will be the countless multi- 
tudes of his people, both the living and the dead, 
and mostly the infant dead, who in that day will 
be "gathered together unto him" (2 Thes. 2: 1) ; 
— the Infant Dead whom Christ their Redeemer 
and Judge, will raise up as the special trophies of 
his grace, and of whom he has said in advance : 
" OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF GoD." The nations 
of the great hereafter, then, risen from the dead, 
who ^^ neither marry nor are given in marriage, for 

* A singular example of the misleading influence of a 
preconceived opinion is found in Hengstenberg on the 
Apocalypse, ch. 21: 24 and 22: 2; where carrying out the 
pre-millennarian doctrine that the heathen are to be con- 
verted after Christ's Advent, he translates, in the former 
of the two: **the heathen shall walk in the light of if — 
(the New Jerusalem come down from heaven) ; and in the 
latter: ** the leaves of the tree (of life) are for the healing 
of the heathen ^"^^ — after the Advent and the resurrection, 
after the Judgment of the living and the dead and the final 
and utter destruction of ** death and hades.'' The Greek 
ethne is generally rendered in the New Testament ** Gen- 
tiles," and sometimes ** nations"; as Hengstenberg also 
does, except where it can be made to fit into his pre-mil- 
lennial theory. The heathen walking in the light of the 
Heavenly City, and being healed with the leaves of the 
tree of life, is quite too much. I have already noted the 
fact that *'post-millennarianism" is practically unknown 
in Germany. It is essentially English and American. See 
pp. 38 and 39. 



96 THE BUKIED NATIONS 

neither can they die any more^'' but ^^are equal to,^^ 
itnd '^ like unto the angels in heaven^^ (Luke 20: 
35-36), will be composed chiefly, and in some 
cases, almost or quite entirely, of the Infant Dead, 
gathered to glory during the long ages of the 
reign of sin and death ; and meanwhile ^Hhe whole 
creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain 
until now," beneath the burden of the sins of 
men ; — subjected thereto in hope; ^'because the cre- 
ation also shall be delivered from the bondage of 
corruption into the glorious liberty of the children 
of God:' Rom. 8: 20-21. '^ And there shall be 
no more from thence an infant of days, nor an 
old man that hath not filled his days " ; but every- 
thing will be in its prime, and in unfading perfec- 
tion and endless glory. And the fact that this 
hope, which loomed up big in the writings and 
preaching of the Reformers (to say nothing of 
the Early and Apostolic Church), has almost 
completely faded out of the consciousness and 
expectation of present-day believers, can only be 
explained, I think, as one of the '^subtleties of 
Satan"; of which Calvin says that ''Satan has 
not only stupefied men's minds, to make them 
bury the memory of the resurrection with the bodies 
of their dead, but has endeavored to corrupt this 
point of doctrine by various fictions, with an ulti- 
mate view to its total subversion:^ (Institutes, 



OF THE IISTFAISTT DEAD. 97 

Ch. 25: Book 3, sec. 5) ; for it is evident that if 
we get all we hope or care for at death, and have 
little or nothing to hope for at the Advent of 
Christ (as seems to be sadly the case with the 
vast majority of Christians in our day) , we shall 
of course disregard or explain away our Lord and 
Master's ceaseless injunctions to watch, and hope, 
and long for, and ^'love his appearing, ^^ 

This, then, has been a masterly device of our 
great Adversary, to *' spiritualize" or immaterial- 
ize ^^THE HOPE OF THE GOSPEL," till you Cannot 
fit it into or harmonize it with the glorious pre- 
dictions and promises that illumine the pages of 
Isaiah and the other prophets of the olden time, 
and we pass them along without regrets, to the 
people who may happen to live during ^^The 
Millennium" ; sublimating and etherealizing the 
parts we would keep for ourselves, so that we may 
take them in ^' a spiritual sense," which is as 
applicable to a * ^disembodied soul" as to a ^^spirit- 
ual body " ; and thus the promises of ^^good things 
to come" can readily be verified to us in heaven, 
or in some mystical way, ^^ without disturbing the 
established order of Nature." The two different 
tendencies are distinctly seen in this : That the Re- 
formers and their successors as far down as the 
middle of the 18th century {vide Baxter's '^Saints' 
Everlasting Rest") freely applied to the Resurrec- 



98 THE BURIED NATIONS 

tion and the eternal state, many of the predictions 
commonly applied to **The Millennium," for 250 
years past ; while President Edwards, who had a 
principal hand in elaborating and disseminat- 
ing Post-millennarianism, argues that these pre- 
dictions and promises must be fulfilled before the 
Day of Judgment, because forsooth after that, 
Christ will carry away his saints to heaven, and 
*^ this cursed world will be set on fire, and turned 
into a great furnace, where the enemies of Christ 
and his Church shall be tormented for ever and 
every Hist, of Redemption, Part II., Sec. II., 
Parag. 6. ^^ Put not your trust in princes T^ 
Psalm 146 : 3. 

Restoration for Sodom as Well as 
for Jerusalem. 

Unexpected and surprising proof to the same 
effect we find in Ezek. 16: 53-55, where the pro- 
phet of God sets forth Sodom and her daughters 
(or dependent cities) long since burnt up with 
fire from heaven, and for 2300 years buried be- 
neath the damned waters of the Dead Sea, as being 
less guilty than Jerusalem, the bloody city "which 
killed the prophets and stoned God's messengers'' 
(Matt. 23 : 37) ; and yet promises restora- 
tion FOR SoDOM, as well as for Samaria and 
Jerusalem : " When I shall bring again their cap- 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 99 

tivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, 
and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, 
then will I bring again the captivity of thy cap- 
tives in the midst of them." '^When thy sisters^ 
Sodom and her daughters, and Samaria and her 
daughters shall return unto their former estate, 
then thou and thy daughters shall return to your 
former estate." Ezek. 16: 53-55. Now as there 
is no restoration promised or possible for the sin- 
ners of Sodom, the restoration of Sodom and her 
dependent cities, Gomorrha, Adma, Zeboim and 
Zoar, can only be possible in the persons of their 
infant dead, whom the blessed angels had long 
been bearing away to glory from that pestiferous 
center of infinite corruption and shame, and of 
those who remained to be carried off to heaven in 
chariots of fire, on the morning of that direful 
day. No figure of speech is admissible in this 
case. 

This unqualified and unconditional promise and 
prediction of the restoration of Sodom, should not 
be lightly put aside by those who really believe in 
God and in his holy word ; and the promise looked 
in EzekieFs day just as hopeless and imaginary 
as it does in ours. But we know also from the 
express words of our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
Sodom and its guilty inhabitants will some day 
"rise up" out of their briny grave, and '*come 



100 THE BXJEIED NATIONS 

to Judgment," and then ^'go away into everlast- 
ing punishment"; but how about its Infant Dead ? 
Will they too be banished, or will they be of the 
number who shall *^ inherit the kingdom prepared 
for the just from the foundation of the world?" 
*^ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 
earth," says Christ, giving utterance to the words 
that are repeated over and over again in the 37th 
Psalm, in the day '^when the wicked shall not 
be ; yea thou shall diligently consider his place ; 
and he shall not be (there) ; but the meek shall 
inherit the earthy and shall delight themselves 
with the abundance of peace." Ps. 37: 10-11. 
Of the babes of Sodom, as well as of the babes of 
Jerusalem, Jesus has said it, that ^^ of such is the 
Kingdom of God"; and if they '^inherit the 
earth" hereafter, why not just that part of it to 
which they belong — where they were born and 
died? When God '* brings again the captivity of 
Sodom," surely he will not be unmindful of its 
sleeping babes, whether Uke others they died in 
their mothers' arms, or went up to glory in the 
midst of fire and smoke. 

One thing more this lesson on Sodom appears 
to teach us. I believe, and I always have believed, 
in the '^ restoration of IsraeV^ to the land of their 
fathers ; and which he has made good to them by 
everlasting and irrevocable titles ; and if the world 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 101 

should stand in its present condition for one hun- 
dred years longer, it is of all future events most 
likely to happen ; and all nations and kingdoms, 
not excepting the Turk, will agree that the land 
that was their fathers', of right belongs to their 
children. But if Christ should come to-morrow 
— an event that he has of purpose left ^^ commit- 
ted to no day J but possible to any,^^ how about the 
restoration of Israel, promised and even sworn to 
in every form of speech (Jer. 31: 35-40; Heb. 6: 
13-17) ? How would he fulfil his manifold promises 
to the descendants of '^Abraham his friend"? 
On this specific point I think this prediction and 
promise comes to shed a flood of no uncertain 
light. Only by resurrection from its watery 
grave can Sodom ever be restored ; and however 
we may think about it, it is certain that whatever 
may or may not happen, and whatever partial 
fulfilments may or may not take place in this 
present world, the only restoration for Israel that 
will be perfect and complete, fulfilling the letter 
and spirit of the promise — that the City, once 
builded, shall be holy unto the Lord; it 

SHALL NOT BE PLUCKED UP NOR THROWN DOWN 

FOR ever" (Jer. 31: 40), can only be fulfilled to 
" them that shall be accounted worthy to obtain 

THAT WORLD, AND THE RESURRECTION FROM 

AMONG THE DEAD." Luke 20: 35. The past 



102 THE BURIED NATIONS 

restoration, or restorations, of Israel have only- 
been partial and incomplete ; and so doubtless will 
be any other merely natural restoration that may 
be in reserve for that wonderful people ; but the 
text we are considering couples the restoration of 
Sodom with that of Samaria and Jerusalem; just 
as Isa. 19: 23-25 couples the promised and endur- 
ing restoration of Israel with that of Egypt and 
Assyria; '4n that day when Israel shall be the 
third with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst 
of the earth ; whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, 
saying : ^^ Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria 
the work of my hands, and Israel mine inherit- 
ance.^^ 

It is evident also, and should never be lost 
sight of in this discussion, that the infant dead 
(of whom Christ's coming Kingdom of Righteous- 
ness and Life Eternal will so largely consist), 
after experiencing the care and tutelage of the 
angels who bore them away to glory, will rise in 
the very lands where they were born and died; and 
thus will realize Christ's promise that *^they 
SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH " in that very portion 
of it to which they rightly belong; and in this 
way will be fulfilled to the letter the great prom- 
ises of God which we have been considering: 
^^All nations which thou hast made shall come 
and shall worship thee, O Lord, and shall glorify 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 103 

thy name." Little enough is the ''glory" he 
has had from them thus far ! *'A11 the ends of 
the earth shall remember and shall turn unto the 
Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall 
worship before him." He will then indeed be 
''glorified in the work of his hands." 

According to the argument which we are pur- 
suing, three-fourths (pp. 46, 56) of the antedilu- 
vian w^orld, or even a larger proportion, which 
filled the earth from end to end with violence and 
intolerable wickedness, were safely housed and 
cared for in one or another of the " many man- 
sions" of "our Father's House" on high; three- 
fourths of the heaven-defiant peoples who built the 
tower of Babel, as a place of refuge, perhaps, 
against the wrath of heaven; three-fourths of 
Asyria, and Babylon, the great oppressors of God's 
ancient people^; three-fourths of the ancient king- 
dom of Egypt, cruel and oppressive of their own 
and other peoples, as well as the children of 
"Abraham the Friend of God"; three-fourths of 
Sodom and Gomorrha and the desperately wicked 
nations of Canaan and all the neighboring powers ; 
three-fourths of Greece, and of the all-conquering 
Romans, and of all the Roman World they sub- 
dued ; three-fourths of India, and China, and of 
Europe as well, from the days of barbarism, 
through the darkness of the Middle Ages down 



104 THE BURIED NATIONS 

to the refinements and corruptions of modern 
Europe ; three-fourths of the Frigid North, and 
three-fourths of the Burning South, and of the 
East and West as well,— gathered into the capa- 
cious home of our gracious God ; and their sleep- 
ing dust, ^^sown" in the earth, as the seed-corn of 
Christ's coming harvest of immortality and life 
eternal, in the great coming day of the new cre- 
ation, for which Christ bids us ever watch, and 
wait, and pray ; but which the craft of Satan seems 
to have reduced quite to the dimensions of a fable, 
in the view of many or most of those who bear 
the Christian name. It will appear the less strange 
that so many refuse to believe in a hell for the 
unjust, when so few really believe in the coming 
glories of the New Creation for the just ; in com- 
parison of which all the glories of the first, pale 
and fade into comparative insignificance — the 
most glorious and enduring work of God I 

'^ For, behold, I create new heavens and a 
new earth; 

and the former shall not he remembered 
nor come into mind. 

But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that 
which I create ; 

for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing 
and her people a joy. 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 105 

And I will rejoice in Jerusalem^ and joy in 
my people; 

and the voice of weeping shall no more be 
heard in her, nor the voice of crying." 

Isa. 65: 17-19. 

In that day, the law of God will be forever 
established in the hearts and abodes of men (Rom. 
3: 31), and without the abatement of one jot or 
one tittle of the exceeding broad commandment, 
men shall '* love the Lord their God with all their 
heart, and with all their soul, and with all their 
strength, and with all their mind, and shall love 
their neighbor as themselves." Then indeed 
^* wars shall cease unto the ends of the earth," 
and men " shall beat their swords into plowshares, 
and their spears into pruning-hooks ; nation shall 
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war anymore — '^for ever, even for ever 
and ever." Then indeed, '^ the earth shall be full 
of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover 
the sea^ ^^After those days, saith the Lord, I 
will put my law in their inward parts, and write 
it in their hearts ; and I will be their God and 
they shall be my people. And they shall teach 
no more every man his neighbor, and every man 
his brother, saying: Know the Lord! for they 
ALL SHALL KNOW ME, from the least of them unto 



106 THE BURIED NATIONS 

the greatest of them, saith the Lord ; for I will 
forgive their iniquity, and will remember their 
sin no more." Jer. 31: 33-34 and Heb. 8: 10-12. 

Conclusions. 

1. We have here comfort for those of us who 
have been bereaved of our little ones, infinitely 
greater than the vague hope that " they are safe 
in heaven." There is a vividness and ring of 
reality about this " Hope of the Gospel," from 
which Paul exhorts that the Colossian believers 
^^ should not be moved a2(;a2/," and " which was 
preached to every creature under heaven" (Col. 
1: 23), which can be found in no other; and all 
the mysticism of the present or of past ages, 
should not be permitted to abate anything of its 
pervasive power with us. Pray, why are we to 
wait, and long for, and love the appearing of the 
Lord, if we have no definite expectations of what 
he is coming back for, except a certain poetic sen- 
timent of something vast and great, or perhaps a 
shuddering dread of harm to ourselves or to ours ? 
It was a master stroke of policy on the part of 
Christ's great enemy and ours, to convert ^Uhe 
Day of Redemption " into a '* Dies Irae ! " That 
is not the Gospel idea at all ; though truly, the 
enemies of Christ and of his Kingdom " shall be 
punished with everlasting destruction from the 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 107 

presence of the Lord and from the glory of his 
power, when he shall come to be glorified in his 
saintSy and to be admired in all them that believe 
. . . in that day" (2 Thes. 1: 8-10); so that it is 
the greatest kindness we can do to our unbeKeving 
and Gospel-neglecting friends to set that fact clear 
and distinct before their eyes ; and so to live our- 
selves that they shall believe our testimony true. 
To do otherwise, to cover it up and smooth it 
over, is to betray our trust, and do to them the 
greatest unkindness in our power — and perhaps 
to ourselves and our own children as well. 

2. We have here a solemn and most tender 
and effective appeal to worldly and Christless 
parents who have buried infant offspring. It was 
a compassionate Redeemer who said to the un- 
believing people of his day : " There shall be wail- 
ing and gnashing of teeth when ye shall see 
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the 
prophets in the Kingdom of God, and you your- 
selves thrust out." Luke 13: 28. We cannot 
tell how, or when, or where they should see their 
godly forefathers in the Kingdom of God, nor is 
it important that we should know; but in the 
same w^ay, and to the same purpose we may say 
to Christless and unbelieving parents to-day: 
''You shall one day see your infant dead in the 
Kingdom of God, made partakers of endless life 



108 THE BURIED NATIONS 

and glory, and you yourselves shut out!" 
Ah, if there be the heart of a true father or 
mother within your bosom, heed the warning, and 
^'turn and hve" ! for Christ assures us that it 
will be a dismal sight to you '^ when ye shall see" 
this. 

3. We have here, if I mistake not, a final and 
crushing argument against all the *^ millennial" 
theories that look forward to the 1000-years' bind- 
ing of Satan as the great promised season of the 
ingathering of souls into the kingdom of God.* 

In the second paragraph of this discussion, is 
given a tabular statement of what would have 
been a very moderate increase of a single pair of 
unf alien human beings, fulfilling the divine com- 
mand to ^^ncrease and multiply," given at the 
outset of our race ; doubling their numbers four 
times in a century. Let the reader now turn 
back and look at it, and ask himself what God 



* The Rev. A. B. Simpson, originator and leader of the 
Christian Alliance Missionary Movement which, for the 
means at its disposal, is doing, perhaps, a wider- spread and 
more self-denying work of evangelization than any other 
body of Christian workers, said, in a sermon of his, pub- 
lished ten or fifteen years ago in ' ' The Christian Alliance^ ' * 
that ** we ought to toil, and labor to preach the Gospel for 
a witness in all the worlds that so Christ may soon come ; 

WHKN MORK SOUI,S WII.I, BE) CONVE^RTEJD IN ON!^ Y^AR, 
THAN IN A THOUSAND YE^ARS B^FOR^.'* 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 109 

would do with the natural increase of human 
kind during the supposed thousand years of 
health, peace and prosperity, in which men are 
supposed to do the will of God on earth even as 
it is in heaven. Even Thomas Scott, the popular 
Family Expositor of our fathers, in his Commen- 
tary on Rev. 20 : 4-6, says that during those 
happy days of the 1000-years' binding of Satan 
(which will be, and for 1000 years will continue 
to be, like a heaven upon earth), vice and out- 
breaking wickedness will cease ; piety and true 
religion will almost or quite universally prevail 
among all nations ; industry, frugality and a 
mutual spirit of helpfulness will remove poverty 
and want ; marriage will be universal, and the 
marriage vow be sacredly kept ; profligacy will be 
unheard of ; population will increase in a way 
hitherto unknown; human life will be greatly 
prolonged, ^^and the number of persons who 
shall live on the earth during the Millennium will 
be immensely greater than the whole multitude 
of the preceding ages ; so that far more of the 
human race may yet be saved than shall perish." 
And theii, the usually '* judicious Scott" is inju- 
dicious enough to say: ** We have as just grounds 
to expect such a happy event, as the Jews had to 
look for a Messiah^ '* Great men are not always 
wise." Job 32 : 9. 



110 THE BURIED NATIONS 

Well, putting aside every other reason for dis- 
carding this current expectation of our fathers, 
of which the Reformation fathers knew nothing, 
and did not hope or pray for,* it will be sufficient 
to ask, what would be done with the people that 
would be born in 1000 years of holy and univer- 

* How far Luther was from indulging any such Mil- 
lennial expectations, is seen in the well-known fact that, 
in common with the Reformers generally, he expected that 
the end of the world was drawing nigh. In his ** Table 
Talk ' * it is related of him that on a certain occasion one 
of his friends spoke of something as likely to happen in 
two or three hundred years ; to which Luther replied : 
**Why, man, the world itself will not last that long!** add- 
ing that the world might last a hundred years, possibly two 
hundred ; but that he could not persuade himself that it 
woidd last fully 300 years more. He said that the Pope 
would not be reformed, and the Turk would not accept the 
Gospel; that the world was getting worse and worse, and 
he * * did not see that Christ could do a better thing than 
order judgment at once ; '* or words to that effect. Calvin 
who was in this, as in most other things, wiser than his 
contemporaries, says in his comments on the Gospels that 
there will be signs to precede the Advent of the Lord, but 
they will be of such a nature as that none will regard them^ 
except such as are always waiting for his appearing, I 
quote from memory. His view of the glorious predictions 
of the old Hebrew prophets may be gathered from his com- 
ments on Matt. 5: 5, ''Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
inherit the earth. ^^ He makes different applications of the 
text to the present condition of believers under the Gospel, 
and then adds that **aftkr The RKSUrrkction, Thk 
MEKK— the people of God— wil,l* BE PUT IN EVERI*ASXING 
INHERITANCE Oif THE EARTH." 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. Ill 

sal wedlock, of plenty, health and universal obe- 
dience to that fundamental law of all temporal 
prosperity ? Scott probably never asked himself 
the question, for if one single pair of human 
beings would be able under the supposed con- 
ditions in 1000 years to people more than 600 
worlds like our own, estimated now at 1500 or 
1600 hundred milKons, what would be the natural 
product of the 1500 millions with which it would 
begin, during a thousand-year period of industry, 
peace, godliness, and consequent worldly prosperity, 
and rapid increase ? And yet the late Rev. Dr. John 
C. Lowrie, in a sermon which he preached as 
Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, 
a good many years ago, in 1866 perhaps, spoke 
in glowing terms of the coming triumphs of the 
Gospel in the approaching Millennium ; and then 
he referred, without condemnation, to the opinion 
of some that the 1000 years of the Millennium 
are to be ^^prophetical years'^; " lengthening out 
the supposed period of the Church's glory, honor 
and peace — prior to the Day of Judgment — to 
360,000 years ! Surely he did not stop to ask 
himself what would be done with the people that 
would be born in one thousand only of those 
360,000 years ! And then we may reasonably 

* Scott also refers to this supposition; but dismisses the 
suggestion, as being disproportionately long. 



112 THE BURIED NATIONS 

. ■ ' ■ .11. . . I .1 ^^^^^^^^^^ 

ask : What would our babies do, and the infinite 
multitude of 'Hhe Nations of the Infant Dead" 
(every one of them as dear to Christ as our own) 
when they come back, in the day of ^^the redemp- 
tion of the purchased possession, to the praise of 
his glory" (Eph. 1: 14), to claim through grace 
their part in the promised '^inheritance of all 
things ^^ ? Surely the people who are clamorous 
for *Hhe millennium" have wholly overlooked 
" the Nations of the Infant Dead." But our Lord 
does not, for he has said \ '' Of such is the King- 
dom of Gody 

Without resorting to any such expedient as 
Scott and others do, for filling up the numbers of 
the redeemed, let us listen to what *^the Evangel- 
ical prophet" tells of the time coming when the 
children of whose birth and bringing up Zion 
knew absolutely nothing [doubtless, I think, the 
infant dead; see vr. 21], should find '^ the land 
too narrow because of the inhabitants," and 
'^ would say in her ears : The place is too strait 
for me; give place to me that I may dwellj^ Isa. 
49 : 19-21. And in his last chapter, and with 
direct reference to the New Heavens and the New 
Earth, and the immense multitudes that should 
come from the Gentile lands, he asks : *^ Who 
hath heard of such a thing? who hath seen such 
things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth 



i 

OF THE IITFAISTT DEAD. 113 

in one day^ or shall a nation be born at once?^^ 
Isa. 66 : 8. Now whatever minor fulifilment these 
words may have hereafter in the more or less 
rapid ingathering of souls, under the preaching 
of the word '* with the Holy Ghost sent down from 
heaven," we know that the prediction will be ful- 
filled to the letter in ''the resurrection of the 
just," and more particularly in the resurrection 
of ''the Nations of the Infant Dead," whose 
numbers will vastly exceed the aggregate of all 
the men and women, both righteous and wicked, 
who have done well or ill their part in life. 

4. A new light is hereby shed on many pas- 
sages of both the Old and New Testaments which, 
looked at from this unaccustomed point of view 
(like the restoration of Sodom) ^ take on a charac- 
ter of verisimilitude sufficient to redeem them 
from the imputation of being purely imaginary. 
As, for example : " Instead of thy fathers shall 
be thy children, whom thou mayest appoint princes 
in all the earth.^^ Ps. 45: 16. Again, it is 
promised that those faithful servants who "over- 
come," shall be appointed rulers over " the 
nations^\' and again, one faithful steward of his 
lord's goods, shall be appointed ruler over ten 
cities ; another, over five ; from which those who 
hold to pre-millennarian views of Scripture, argue 
for a mixed state of things after the Advent of 



114 THE BURIED NATIONS 



the Lord, in which mortals and immortals shall, 
during the 1000-years' binding of Satan, occupy 
jointly the earth, and the risen saints rule the 
nations, and personally superintend the conquering 
of the world for Christ; which though the farthest 
possible from the intention of its zealous advo- 
cates, necessarily tends by the artifice of Satan 
(as Calvin says), ^^ to bring the doctrine of the 
resurrection into contempt^ with a view to the 
ultimate subversion of this point of doctrine." 
But as we have already indicated, and as is 
plainly undeniable, '^ the Kingdom will consist 
OF TWO CLASSES OF PERSONS: first^ " those who 
through much tribulation enter into the King- 
dom of God," and ^^by patient continuance in 
well doing seek for glory, honor and immor- 
tality," to whom God will award " eternal life," 
'^ in the day when he shall judge the secrets of men 
by Jesus Christy according to the GospeV^ (Rom. 
2 : 7, 10, 16); and secondly y those little ones, who 
through the abounding grace of Christ, and in 
the infinite wisdom and mercy of God, are made 
"heirs of the Kingdom," without effort or en- 
deavor of their own^ and in whom the words of 
the prophet will be fulfilled in a far higher and 
vaster sense than he probably ever supposed : 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 115 

" I was found of them that sought me not ; 
I was made manifest to them that asked not 
after me." Rom. 10: 20. 

And it may be reasonably supposed that two 
classes so entirely distinct in character, the for- 
mer representing ^^the overcomers," and the 
latter 'Uhe nations" of the great hereafter, in- 
conceivably more numerous than ever before was 
regarded as possible on earth, may well occupy 
to each other such relations as those supposed, 
without any such incongruous mixtures of mor- 
tals and immortals, as some seriously advocate as 
possible and promised. When the primeval curse 
is revoked, and men no longer " in the sweat of 
their face eat their bread, till they return unto 
the earth from whence they were taken" (Gen. 
3: 19), and especially if , in the possible topograph- 
ical changes of the future, the words ^* and there 
was no more sea^^ (Rev. 21: 1) should turn out 
to be literally and not figuratively true, after 
that last great predicted shaking of heaven and 
earth (Heb. 12: 26, 27), it will be found that the 
earth will be amply large for all the people that 
were ever taken out of it, when neither death nor 
reproduction will be known on earth any more 
than in heaven. 

Some such state of things seems to be plainly 
hinted at in the words of Paul, where he says : 



116 THE BTJBIED NATIONS 

*'For our citizenship (R. V.) — Gr. politeumay our 
political or state relations — is in heaven, from 
whence also we look for the Savior ^ the Lord 
Jesus Christ ; who shall change our vile body, 
that it may be fashioned like unto his own glo- 
rious body, acccording to the working whereby 
he is able to subdue all things unto himself." 
Phil. 3: 20-21. 

It is not my purpose to speculate on these 
matters: but the ^'all nations" we have been 
so long discussing will doubtless have organized 
governments and gradations of rulers, in whom 
may readily be fulfilled all the little we can gather 
in regard to *^the nations of the saved," without 
resorting to the wild and fantastical notions that 
some parade as Scripture teachings. 

** Then shall the earth yield her increase, 
and God, even our own God, shall bless us ; 
God shall bless us, 

and all the ends of the earth shall fear him,^^ 

Ps. 67: 6, 7. 
But even more to our purpose are the words 
of our Lord himself, where he said to his troubled 
disciples : '^ Ye are they that have continued with 
me in my temptations [how pathetic the mention, 
**MY temptations!"] and I appoint unto you 
a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed 
unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 117 

table, IN MY KINGDOM ; and ye shall sit on thrones 
(R.V.), judging [or, ruling, see Judg. 2: 16, 18] 
the twelve tribes of Israel," Luke 22: 28-30. To 
the same effect we read in Matt. 19: 28-29: ^^ Jesus 
said unto them : Verily, I say unto you, that ye 
who have followed me, in the Regeneration (or 
the New Creation, Rev. 21: 5) when the Son of 
man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also 
shall sit on twelve thrones, judging (or ruling) 
the twelve tribes of Israel." We ask ourselves 
naturally: ^^ Where are 'the Twelve Tribes of 
Israel' to-day?" *' Where will they be to-mor- 
row?" I doubt not that if the world stands 
under present conditions for one hundred years 
longer, the Restoration of Israel to their own 
land, given to them by God himself under irre- 
vocable titles, will be an accomplished fact, in a 
purely natural way. But ''the twelve tribes of 
Israel," what about them? They are gone for 
good, and their people scattered to the four winds 
of heaven, and mingled for the most part, with 
the nations where they have lived. If Israel is 
ever restored in a purely natural sense, it will be 
as a nation, and not by tribes. Yet our Lord 
has not only spoken of "The Twelve Tribes of 
Israel," but has promised to his twelve fishermen 
that they will each and severally be rulers, judges, 
Or princes over them each and severally, "m the 



118 THE BURIED NATIONS 

Regeneration^''^ or the new Creation =:'Hhe Day 
of Redemption." Now when or how shall these 
twelve tribes of Israel *' begin their lives anew,^^ 
except in and through the resurrection of their 
infant dead ? For all the Scriptures of the pro- 
phets give us to understand, as said already, on 
pp. 28-30, that all the holy dead of Israel's men 
and women, in all its ages, till the time that "all 
the people cried out" frantically in their day of 
doom : "His blood be on us and on our children" 
(Matt. 27: 25), were but a scattered "few." Christ 
himself said they were but "few" that even 
found the way of life ; while Jeremiah, in a time 
of desperate wickedness and impending ruin, 
said: "Run ye to and fro through the streets of 
Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in 
the broad places thereof, if ye can find one man, 
if there be any that execute th judgment , that seek- 
eth the truth ; and I will pardon it ! " Jer, 5 : 1. 
"The Twelve Tribes of Israel" of which our 
Savior speaks, and gives this promise to his 
faithful few, are surely " the Buried Tribes of 
IsraeVs Infant Dead^^ ; who surely will be more 
numerous in the Day of the New Creation, ten 
times more numerous, twenty times more numer- 
ous, an hundred times more numerous, a thou- 
sand times more numerous, than David or Joab 
ever led forth to battle. Surely no reader will 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 119 

pretend that this twice recorded promise of our 
Lord means only that his apostles should have 
and hold an honor able place in heaven! 

And to the same purpose we read in John's 
Apocalyptic Visions, that in addition to ^* a great 
multitude which no man can number, out of all 
nations, and kindreds and peoples and tongues, 
he saw, and heard the number of 144,000 of the 
twelve tribes of Israel^ not merely as individuals, 
but by tribes J sl perfect number in each case: 
" Of the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand ; of the 
tribe of Reuben, twelve thousand ; of the tribe of 
Gad, twelve thousand," and so on to the end of 
the list. ^^ All nations whom thou hast made," 
including all the twelve tribal nations of Israel, 
will come and worship, and glorify the name of 
him who washed them in his blood, and saved 
them for his name. Rev. 7: read the whole 
chapter. 

So that in spite of sin and Satan, in spite of 
death and hell, and in spite of all the failures and 
apostacies of that stiff-necked race, each several 
tribe of the Commonwealth of Israel is to have 
its full and complete representation (as the 12,000, 
and 12,000, and 12,000 implies), in the kingdom 
of God ; and I need hardly insist that in the 
nature of the case, as well as by reason of the 
uniform wickedness and unfaithfulness of that 



120 THE BUEIED NATIONS 

favored race, and also by the whole course of 
this discussion on the ** Nations of the Infant 
Dead," it is put beyond dispute that "the twelve 
tribes of Israel," reckoned by their tribal divi- 
sions, will chiefly consist of their infant dead; 
multitudes of whom were offered in sacrifice to 
the bloody and filthy gods of Canaan. 

There is, therefore, a " restoration of Israel " 
promised, not only as a nation^ but in its several 
tribes as well; though all the genealogical records 
have perished ; for the record is with God, and he 
will make good his word. And not only the 
sealed and saved of the twelve tribes of Israel are 
mentioned, hut after this^ the ^^Seer^^ ^Hooked and 
saw^^ countless multitudes, representing all the 
nations and tribes and peoples and tongues of men, 
composed chiefly, and in many cases exclusively, 
of the iiJant dead, as we have proved over and 
over again ; no longer dead, but raised up to the 
possession of a "life that is life indeed." 
And as we have seen that there is to be a national 
and tribal restoration of Israel, of which in the 
pictorial representations of the ancient prophets) 
the Old Testament is full, so also we have seen 
that a restoration is promised to ^^ Sodom and 
her daughters,^^ or dependent cities, as well; 
doubtless, in the persons of their infant dead; 
and in the same form the promise is distinctly 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 121 

given of the restoration or restitution of Egypt j 
and Assyria, and Babylon, and Philistia, and 
Ethiopia (Ps. 87: 3-6, Isa. 19: 23-25); and by 
parity of reasoning of all nations, ancient and 
modern, known and unknown, each by its several 
and distinctive name, in the persons of their 
infant dead, ^'oF whom is the kingdom of god," 
raised up each and all in the lands where they 
were born and died. And in this way, in the great 
hereafter, will be literally fulfilled the promises, 
which fill the Bible, that '^ all the ends of the 
earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord, 
and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship 
before him" (Ps. 22: 27); and this without even 
looking towards the unscriptural tenets of Uni- 
versalism, or of Restorationism, of such as " die 
in their sins." Thus it pleases God, as is his 
wont, *' out of the mouths of babes and sucklings 
to perfect his praise," and '* stain the pride of all 
human glory" ; 'Hhat according as it is written, 
He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." 
(1 Cor. 1: 31). What a dire disgrace to Adam's 
name and Adam's race, what an eternal igno- 
miny to boasting human reason, wisdom and 
prowess, and what an exhibition of the power 
and pervasiveness of sin it is, that in order to fill 
his kingdom with sons and daughters of Adamic 
race, God needed to snatch away three-fourths, or 



122 THE BURIED NATIONS 

more, of the race before they had sense enough 
to trample on his laws ; and out of the remaining 
one-fourth, to save but '^ a remnant, according to 
the election of grace " I 

It is quite ordinary in our day for superficial 
thinkers, while enjoying in this most favored of 
all lands the unique and unspeakable temporal 
blessings of Bible Christianity, to ask with 
ill-disguised disdain, whether Christianity is not 
after all a failure^ because forsooth even in this 
Protestant land, the majority of nominal Prot- 
estants seldom darken the doors of a church, 
except at a wedding or a funeral. But Christ, 
in his parable of the Great Supper, teaches us 
that, as the feast was furnished with guests 
though ''with one consent" the invited parties 
refused to come, so God's " house will be full,^^ 
however many here and elsewhere may ''make 
light" of the Gospel invitation. "The Nations 
of the Infant Dead " will far more than replace 
the numbers that in all ages and countries have 
regarded God's claims and invitations as beneath 
their notice. So that if Christ should come 
to-morrow, and the Gospel offer to sinners no 
longer be made, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, India, 
China, Japan, Turkey, the Hermit Kingdom of 
Thibet, the dusky continent of Africa, as well as 
Europe and the two Americas, together with the 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 123 

Islands of the Sea, will have already furnished an 
incomparably larger contingent to the realms of 
light and life than to the realms of darkness and 
death ; and in any case, Christ " shall see of the 
travail of his soul^ and shall be satisfied." 
Isa. 53: 11. And doubtless when all ''the names 
written from the foundation of the world" in ''the 
Lamb's Book of Life" are accounted for, and he 
can say : " Of all that thou gavest me I have lost 
nothing," "the end shall come"; "and the Saints 
(both small and great) shall take the Kingdom ^ 
" And the Kingdom, and the dominion, and the 
greatness of the Kingdom under the whole 
HEAVEN [and not above it'] shall be given to the 
people of the Saints of the Most High God, whose 
Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom ; and all 

DOMINIONS SHALL SERVE AND OBEY HIM." Dan. 

7: 27. 

If the views here presented are securely based 
in reason and Scripture, I may venture to quote, 
without fear of misunderstanding, the words of 
Ezekiel the prophet in his 37th chapter, bearing 
precisely on this point : a prediction which (over 
and above all natural and figurative fulfilments 
in the past), points directly down to a super- 
natural fulfilment in the future. Since the term 
" Israel " under the Old Testament designates the 
natural seed of Abraham and " the chosen people 



124 THE BUKIED NATIONS 

of God," under the New it necessarily includes all 
the spiritual seed, whether Gentile or Jewish ; so 
that all the individuals and all the nations of the 
redeemed and saved are in their due proportions 
and limitations included under the promise. A 
literal restoration of Israel to their own God-given 
land is here predicted and promised, and is no 
doubt intended ; but Paul in Rom. 4: 13 distinctly 
informs us that in that promise to Abraham, 
which secured Canaan to the Jew, was included 

THE INHERITANCE OP THE WORLD ('^of the earth,^^ 

says Christ himself, in Matt. 5: 5), for all the 
spiritual seed of Abraham ; but without prejudice 
to the special donation of that part of it called 
Canaan, previously secured by irrevocable titles 
to the natural descendants of Abraham. And 
Peter, in Acts 3: 19-24, no less explicitly teaches 
that all these great promises have reference to ^Hhe 
times of restitution (or restoration) of all things," 
of which God has been giving a uniform testimony 
*' by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the 
world began" ; of whom Jesus expressly teaches, 
in Luke 11: 50-51, that the martyr Abel was one 
— the first. 

Now Ezek. 37: 12-14 gives us God's own inter- 
pretation of the prophet's vision and parable of 
the Valley of Dry-bones, which, while strictly 
appropriate to the u«se we make of it in all our 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 125 

Churches, should by no means be Hmited to such 
use. Listen! ''Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, 
oh my people, I will open your graves and cause 
you to come up out of your graves, and will bring 
you into the land of Israel.* And ye shall know 
— that is, ye shall have occasion to know — that I 
am the Lord (Jehovah), when I have opened 
your graves, oh my people, and brought you up 
out of your graves, and shall put my Spirit in 
you, and ye shall live, and I will place you in 
your own land: then shall ye know that I, the 
Lord, have spoken it and performed it, saith the 
Lord." The return of the pitiful remnant, under 
Cyrus' proclamation, poor, impoverished, dispir- 
ited, oppressed, worldly, wicked, selfish, and 
unworthy (as portrayed by the prophets of the 
restoration, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, as 
well as their history from that day to this) pro- 
claim that Ezekiel had in view something infi- 
nitely more glorious than that ; as he goes on to 
say : '' Thus saith the Lord God : Behold, I will 
take the children of Israel from among the 
heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather 

* Apropos of this is the remark of Calvin : * * There is yet 
a clearer proof of this [faith in the resurrection of the 
body], in the example of Jacob; who to testify to his pos- 
terity that the hope of the promised land did not forsake his 
heart even in deaths commanded his bones to be reconveyed 
thither." Institutes, Book III., Ch. 25, Sec. 8. 



126 THE BURIED NATIONS 

them on every side, and bring them into their 
own land : and I will make them one nation in 
the land, upon the mountains of Israel ; and one 
king shall be king to them all : and they shall be 
no more two nations, neither shall they be divided 
into two kingdoms any more at all ; neither shall 
they defile themselves any more with their idols^ 
nor with their detestable things, nor with any of 
their transgressions ; but I will save them out of 
all their dwellingplaces, wherein they have sinned, 
and will cleanse them: so shall they be my 
people, and I will be their God. And David my 
servant shall be king over them; and they all 
shall have one shepherd : they shall also walk in 
my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do 
them. And they shall dwell in the land that I 
have given unto Jacob my servant^ wherein your 
fathers have dwelt ; and they shall dwell therein, 
even they, and their children, and their children's 
children for ever : and my servant David shall be 
their prince for ever. Moreover I will make a 
covenant of peace with them ; it shall be an ever- 
lasting covenant with them : and I will place them, 
and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in 
the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle 
also shall be with them : yea, I will be their God, 
and they shall be my people. And the heathen 
(Heh, the nations) shall know that I the Lord do 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 127 

sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in 
the midst of them for evermore." Vrs. 21-28. 

To the same purpose, Peter, in Acts 3: 19-21, 
said to his unconverted countrymen: "Repent ye 
therefore and be converted, that your sins may be 
blotted out; that so (R. V.) times of refreshing 
[** times of blessing" we would say] may come 
from the presence of the Lord, and he may send 
(again) the Christ (=the Messiah) who hath 
been appointed for you, even Jesus; whom the 
heaven must receive (and contain), until the times 
of restoration (or restitution)of all things; whereof 
God hath spoken by the mouth of his holy pro- 
phets which have been since the world began": — 
then will he send him " the second time without 
sin, unto salvation, unto them that wait for him." 
Heb. 9: 28. 

So also Paul testified to the wise men of Athens 
(who have been in their graves for 1800 years): 
" The times of the (former) ignorance God over- 
looked ; but now he commandeth all men every- 
where to repent ; because he hath appointed a day 
in the which he will judge the world — the living 
and the dead — in righteousness, by that man 
whom he hath ordained ; whereof he hath given 
assurance to all men, in that he hath raised him 
from the dead." Acts 17: 30-31. As the wicked 
"perish" just the same whether Christ comes or 



128 THE BUEIED NATIONS 

not (see 1 Cor. 15: 18, and page 130), the more 
I think of it, the more I am convinced that the 
principal object of the Day of Judgment, so far as 
we individually are concerned, is the open and 
public ascertainment, upon a judgment of works, 
of who are and who are not the rightful heritors 
of the kingdom of glory and life eternal, that day 
to be opened up ; intended and prepared for the 
just when the foundations of the world were laid; 
but of which the malice and subtlety of Satan 
has made a kingdom for himself, of darkness, sin 
and death.* 

Definite Results of our Investigation. 

Science, when not antagonistic to Divine Rev- 
elation, sustains, in the main, the general view of 
the future of our world presented in the foregoing 
pages. The great geologist and eminent man of 
science, the late lamented Hugh Miller, who stood 
in the very front ranks of the scientists of his 
day, in perhaps the last volume that came from 
his pen, speaks thus of the future of our world, 
as he fore-read it in the light of both Science and 
Scripture: *^I learn by inevitable inference from 
one of the most distinct articles of my creed, that 
as certainly as the dynasty of the fish was pre- 
determined in the scheme of Providence to be 

*See2Pet. 1: 11. 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 129 

followed by the higher dynasty of the reptile, and 
that of the reptile by the still higher dynasty of 
the mammal, so it was equally predetermined that 
the dynasty of fallible man should be succeeded 
by the dynasty of glorified, immortal man^ 
*' Instead of one, we see many footprints, each in 
turn in advance of the print behind it, and on a 
higher level; and founding at once on an acquaint- 
ance with the past, extended throughout all the 
periods of the geologists, and on that instinct of 
our nature whose peculiar function it is to antici- 
pate at least one creation more, we must regard 
the expectation of "new heavens and a new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness" as not unphilo- 
sophiCj but, on the contrary, altogether rational 
and in accord with experienced Testimony of the 
Rocks, pp. 261 and 223. 

Simon Peter was neither a geologist nor a man 
of science, but he was a great Apostle, one of 
those most intimate with his Lord and Master, 
and an eye-witness of his glory in the Mount of 
Transfiguration; and by the inspiration of the 
Spirit who spoke in Moses and the other ancient 
prophets, he writes ; as if looking down to this 
day of increasing *' Science," and of decreasing 
Faith in God's word: '* Knowing this first, that 
in the last days there shall come scoffers, walking 
after their own lusts, and saying : Where is the 



130 THE BURIED NATIONS 

• 

PROMISE OF HIS COMING? for since the fathers 
fell asleep, all things continue as they were from 
the beginning of the creation. For this they are 
willingly ignorant of, that by the word of God the 
heavens were of old, and the earth standing out 
of the water, and in the water : whereby the world 
that then was, being overflowed with water, 
perished : but the heavens and the earth that are 
now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved 
unto fire, against the Day of Judgment and perdi- 
tion of ungodly men^ We learn from the parable 
of the Ri^h Man and Lazarus, and from the end 
©f Judas Iscariot (Acts 1: 25), that the wicked 
perish whether Christ comes or not; and the longer 
he delays to come, the greater the number of those 
who do in fact perish. Peter, therefore, means the 
day that is to make an end of sin and of sinners, 
and WIPE OUT ungodliness (as is so often re- 
peated in the 37th Psalm), in preparation for 
"the new heavens and new earth" — that new 
world of promise, as he proceeds to say, "wherein 
dwelleth righteousness" (2 Pet. 3: 3-7). Peter 
then adds, that the Lord has not forgotten his 
promise, but is waiting patiently with reference to 
us, his people, lest any of them should perish, 
but that all should come to repentance and salva- 
tion ; as Jesus himself says in John 6: 38-89 : " I 
came down from heaven not to do my own will, 



OP THE INFANT DEAD. 131 

but the will of him that sent me. And this is the 
will of him that sent me, that of all which he hath 
given me I should lose nothing^ but should raise 
it up at the last day.*^ 

Heb. 9: 26 teaches us that Christ, "in the end 
of the ages, was manifested to put away sin 
BY THE SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF." Daniel and 
Isaiah tell us that Messiah the Prince was to come 
''to finish the transgression, and to make an end 
OF SINS, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and 

TO BRING IN everlasting RIGHTEOUSNESS"; that 

''he will swallow up Death in victory, and the 
Lord God w^ill wipe away tears from off all faces, 
and the rebuke of his people shall he take 
FROM OFF ALL THE EARTH." Dan. 9 ! 24 ; Isa. 
24: 8. About earth then, and not heaven, is he 
speaking. 

In vivid contrast with the supine indifference 
of men, even in a nominally Christian land, Paul 
represents the whole creation, and all inanimate 
nature, as groaning under the burden of the curse, 
as sighing for a better state, and with outstretched 
neck waiting for the promised day of its deliver- 
ance; saying: "For I reckon [as the result of a 
deliberate calculation] that the sufferings of this 
present time are not worthy to be compared with 
the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the 
earnest expectation of the creature (R.V. the ere- 



132 THE BURIED NATIONS 

ation) waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of 
God. For the creation was made subject to vanity, 
not wilHngly, but by reason of Him who hath 
subjected the same in hope ; because the creation 
itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of 
corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children 
of God. For we know that the whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth together in pain until 
now. And not only they, but ourselves also, who 
have the first-fruits of the spirit, even we our- 
selves groan within ourselves, waiting for the 
Adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.^^ 
Rom. 8 : 18-23. 

Science therefore attests the probability that 
the next and last step in the upward progress of 
this earth of ours, will be into its physical and 
moral perfection, towards which from "the be- 
ginning" it has through the vast geologic ages 
of the past been tending; and Scripture attests 
the absolute certainty, that as Calvin expresses 
it, " God will restore this world, now fall- 
en, INTO PERFECTION." ^^ Behold I create new 
heavens, and a new earth !^^ says the great Jeho- 
vah, in Isa. 65 : 17 ; " and the former shall not 
be remembered, nor come into mind": "new 
heavens and a new earth" — A new world. But 
who shall inhabit it ? 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 133 

** Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? 
or who shall stand in his holy place ? 
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, 
who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, 

nor sworn deceitfully. 
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, 
and righteousness from the God of his sal- 
vation. 
This is the generation of them that seek thee, 
that seek thy face, oh (God of) Jacob." 

Ps. 24: 3-5. 
See also Ps. 15. And the final Judge of all 
has said, from whose sentence there is no ap- 
peal, and therefore it is wickedness as well as 
foolishness to trifle with his words : " Verily, 
verily, I say unto thee ; Except a man be born 
again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." John 
3:3. He says also : ** A good tree cannot bring 
forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring 
forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not 
forth good fruit, shall be hewn down and cast into 
the fire." Matt. 7: 18-19, Who, and how many, 
then, will have their everlasting inheritance in the 
" new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness?" On pp. 27-30 I have shown 
how down to the times of Christ, through all the 
preceding ages, ''few and far between" were the 
people, among the most favored nations and tribes, 



134 THE BUBIED NATIONS 

who feared God and kept his commandments ; 
and since that time, for a thousand or twelve 
hundred years preceding the glorious Reforma- 
tion of the 16th Century, the light of Evangelical 
Christianity went almost entirely out; and even 
since that time, in many of what were once 
Christian peoples of Europe and Asia, the case is 
little if any better. In many parts of Spain* 
to-day, with religious ^Uoleration^^ secured by 
law, a man is more certain of judical punishment, 
or social ostracism, for the ^ 'crime" of reading and 
following the Bible, and associating with those 
who do, than for stealing a horse, or for highway 
robbery; and that in the name of Christ and 
Christianity t And among ourselves, how small 
a proportion of the 20 million communicants in 
our Evangelical Churches make conscience of 
walking with steady feet the strait and narrow 
way that leads to eternal life? If only '* those 
who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek 
for glory, honor and immortahty," are to have 
part in " the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord 
and Savior Jesus Christ," we shall be forced to 
conclude that, viewing the wide world as a whole. 



* I take three Spanish Evangelical newspapers, published 

respectively in Madrid, Figueras and Barcelona, and know 

what Spaniards yet suffer over there for Christ's sake and 

he Gospel's, even in this day of general religious liberty. 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 135 

the "Kingdom of God" will be almost as sparsely- 
populated as a wilderness. 

But we are overlooking "the little ones," of 
whom the Judge of all has declared in advance 
that ** of such is the Kingdom of God." On pp. 
46, 55, 56 and 85, I have shown that of the 
children of Adam's race, born into this '4ost 
world," two-thirds or possibly three-fourths have 
died before they entered on the period of "per- 
sonal accountability," whatever that may be. And 
then, settling down on the smallest proportion of 
infant mortality alleged, to wit, a general average 
of two deaths out of every three births, of children 
under five years of age, the world over, and in all 
past ages, we have concluded that if 1000 milUons 
of the world's estimated present population of 
1500 millions are to fill infant graves, then 
reckoning backwards through the past 6000 years 
of Man on this planet (or 200 generations), upon 
a very reasonable, and even a low, estimate, there 
are at least 100,000 millions already up yonder, 
waiting for "the Day of Redemption." 

Only a semi-Saddusaic disbelief, or doubt, of 
the reality of the resurrection of the body could 
induce any one to suppose that " in the resurrec- 
tion" the redeemed would no longer need a ^Hocal 
habitations''^ as well as a "name" in God's house. 
And to repel this idea, which is common enough 



136 THE BUBIED NATIONS 

I have taken occasion in the course of this dis- 
cussion, to suggest, rather than to affirm, that 
when the infant dead are raised up in the very- 
lands they properly belong to, where they were 
born and died, they will not only represent a dead 
pasty but begin right there a living future. Only 
so could God ^^ make mention of Egypt and Baby- 
Ion among them that know him^^; and also of 
'' Phihstia, and Tyre and Ethiopia." Ps. 87 : 4. 
Only thus can he in ages to come say: " Blessed 
be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my 
hands y and Israel my inheritance!^^ Isa. 19: 25. 
And what is true of them will be doubtless true 
of the other unnamed peoples, referred to in Psalm 
87, as yet to be ''written up" among ''the 
nations" of the future, who should be "born," 
or re-born in Zion. In a sense and manner im- 
possible for us to foresee or forecast now, but 
perfectly intelligible then, all of these redeemed 
nations, I take it, may yet possess the lands that 
were once their fathers^ and revive and perpetuate 
their old names^"^ 

And among them, Israel, of course; and this 
we say, not by remote and (as some will regard 
it) by questionable inference, but in direct fulfil- 



* Whatever may or may not have been the precise 
thought of Moses, it is very interesting to note what he 
wrote in Deut. 32: 8: — 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 137 

ment of scores and scores of predictions and 
promises ; of which, since the allegorizing days of 
Origen, the people of Israel have been system- 
atically robbed, by means of the same spiritualistic 
process which has gone far to rob us ourselves of 
all the promises and predictions that have an 
EARTHWARD look. In his "Life and Times of 
Calvin," Vol. I. page 307, Dr. Philip Henry thus 
speaks of Luther: **How Luther, when excited 
by the beauties of nature, still held fast by his 
thought of the Kingdom of God, Mathesius shows 
in the following statement : The spring of 1540 
was very beautiful, everything was green and 
blooming. The Doctor said to Mr, Justus Jonas : 
** If sin and death were away, we might well be 
satisfied to remain in such a paradise. But it 



* * When the Most High divided unto the nations their 
inheritance, 

when he separated the sons of Adam, 

he set the bounds of the people 

according to the number of the children of Israel. 

For the Lord's portion is his people; 

Jacob is the lot of his inheritance." 
Which Dr. Kennicott, as quoted by Adam Clarke, takes to 
mean that after the Flood, God definitely ** divided the 
earth'' (Gen. 10: 25) among the sons, or descendants, of 
Noah ; assigning Europe to Japheth, Africa (called "the 
land of Ham" in Ps. 105: 23, 27) to the younger son of 
Noah, and Asia to Shem, reserving expressly Canaan as a 
possession for the sons of Jacob ! 



138 THE BURIED NATIONS 

will be far lovelier when the old world and the old 
skin are renewed^ and an eternal spring arrives 
which shall continue forever.'*^ Calvin, too, in his 
commentary on Matt. 5: 5, says that " after the 
RESURRECTION, the meek (or the righteous) will 

BE PUT IN EVERLASTING INHERITANCE OP THE 

EARTH." Samuel Rutherford, one of the great 
lights of the Westminster Assembly, in his famous 
^^ Letters y^ fairly revels, *'sick of love" (Cant. 5: 
8), in anticipation of the home-coming of the 
heavenly Bridegroom; when all nature will put 
on its holiday garments. But I have not found 
the word "Millennium" in the whole bulky 
volume. Cf. Calvin's Insts., B. Ill, Chs. 9, 25. 

With these vivid and naturalistic views of the 
coming redemption^ the Gospel triumphed over 
the ancient paganism. With the same, as seen 
in the writings of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Ruther- 
ford, Baxter, and others of the Reformation and 
post-Reformation worthies, our fathers triumphed 
over the Roman Apostacy.^ We owe it, I suppose. 



* If my readers knew, as I do, the original and genuine 
article, rather than the modern supposititious form of it 
which boasts the name of ** American Catholicism,^^ they 
would have little or no fault to find with the characteriza- 
tion. I know what I am talking about: and dare to make 
the averment, as one who holds himself responsible to God 
for the truth of what I say, [that if Romanism, as seen in 
Spain and Spanish America, and Italy as well, is not an 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 139 

to the extreme spiritualization of our Puritan 
forefathers (to whom in other respects we owe so 
much), that these views of the fulfilment of the 
promises of God in their natural (I do not say 
literal) sense, have in general faded out of the 
consciousness of Christian people in our day (and 
with them great part of their awakening power) , 
till with multitudes "heaven" is hardly any longer 
A PLACE, and the " spiritual body" of the Resur- 
rection becomes almost as unsubstantial as a 
ghost — something too ethereal to be seen^ and 
touched^ and felt to be a real and true material 
body at all : as the risen Savior said of himself 
to his astonished disciples, who supposed it was 
an apparition that came in through unopened 
doors, and stood unbidden in their midst: *^ Be- 
hold my hands and my feet, that if is I myself : 
handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh 
and bones as ye see me have.^^ Luke 24 : 39. It 
is an unscriptural and harmful supposition that 
it was not Christ's resurrection, but his exalta- 
tion to the right hand of God, that effected the 

unblushing apostacy from the Gospel preached by Christ 
and his apostles, and exhibited in the original and divinely 
inspired records that have come down to us, then sixty 
years' daily study of the Bible have sufficed to teach me 
nothing about it. And the sooner our American people 
come to know it in its true character, the better for all 
concerned. It is no charity to diagnose smallpox as measles. 



140 THE BURIED NATIONS 

great transformation in his human nature, from 
mortal to immortal, from corruption to incorrup- 
tion, from weakness to power, or from the condi- 
tion of a "natural body" to that of a " spiritual 
body." The Bible lays all possible stress on 
Christ's resurrection from the dead, rather than 
on his ascension to glory. The Presbyterian 
Confession of Faith declares that " At the last 
day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be 
changed : and all the dead shall be raised up with 
the self-same bodies^ and none otheVy although 
with different qualities, which shall be united 
again to their souls forever." Chap. 32, Sec. 2. 
Otherwise, it would not be a "resurrection" at 
all. 

While I have no desire or intention to dogma- 
tize about things unseen as yet and future, nor 
any scheme of interpretation of unfulfilled pro- 
phecy to propose, I beg leave to offer a suggestion 
or two, leading, I think, in the right direction, 
which may merit the reader's further study: 
When Christ, as Mediator, in the use of that "all 
power in heaven and earth," which was " given 
HIM '^ by God the Father, as he himself says in 
Matt. 28: 18 — and which was therefore quite aside 
from his divine nature and prerogative — shall 
have "put down all authority, and dominion and 
power"; when, after that, ^^ the Son also shall 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 141 

himself he subject (in his human nature, of course), 
to him that put all things under him, that God 
may he all in alV^ when next, he shall have 
*' delivered up the (Mediatorial) Kingdom to God, 
even the Father" (1 Cor. 15: 24-28), and shall 
have vacated his Father^ s throne to take possession 
of his own proper throne (as he himself says in 
Rev. 3: 21); and when "the Lord God (as the 
angel Gabriel foretold to his mother Mary) shall 
give unto him the throne of David his father 
(which surely is on earth, and not in heaven), 
and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, 
and of his kingdom there shall he no end^^ (Luke 
1: 32-33); and when the nations of the redeemed, 
no less truly men and women than now while 
they " spend their life as a shadow upon earth," 
shall dwell each in their own appointed possession ; 
and Israel also (a thousand times more numerous 
than ever David or Joab led forth to battle); 
there may then be spiritual, but none the less 
literal fulfilments of the ancient predictions, than 
were ever possible in this body of sin and death, 
and "the life that is life indeed" verify predic- 
tions and promises that lie far out of the reach of 
the fleeting shadows which we call "mortal men." 
Let it be never forgotten that it lies entirely 
within the possibiUties of the future that Abra- 
ham may yet dwell at home in the land wherein 



142 THE BURIED NATIONS 

he lived and died a stranger ; and which yet God 
*^ promised that he would give it to him for a 
possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet 
he had no child." Acts 7: 5. And Jeremiah 
twice says (as translated literally, and as it is 
rendered in the Jewish Version of Isaac Leeser, 
in the literal translation of Robert Young, and in 
the Modern Spanish Version as well) that God 
gave it to him and to his descendants "from 
ETERNITY, AND TO ETERNITY." Jer. 7: 7 and 25: 5. 
The three worlds that Peter names in his 
Second Epistle, ch. 3: 5-13 (''the world that is 
now," the world that was before the Flood, and 
the world that is to be, after the flood of fire) , are 
essentially one and the same, under different con- 
ditions ;* and the Confession of Faith of the 
Presbyterian Church, or better, of all the Presby- 



* It is perhaps generally supposed that when, in this 
passage, Peter says that in **the Day of Judgment and 
perdition of ungodly men " * * the earth and the works that 
are therein shall be burnkd up,'* he means to say that 
that will be the end of this material world. But that 
would be as false in physics as in Scriptural representation. 
You may change the form of matter, but you cannot des- 
troy its substance. Peter himself proceeds to say that ** the 
heavens and the earth that are now'' will give place to 
* ' the new heavens and the new earth ' ' which are to be 
hereafter, ** wherein dwelleth righteousness." Thus Paul 
says, in the literal rendering of what he wrote down, that 
unto his Beloved Son, and ''not unto angels did God put 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 143 

terian Churches, say that we — including our 
Father Abraham, the father of all believers — 
*^will be raised up in the self-same body, and none 
other, although with different qualities.^^ To 
present-day unbelief no fitter reply can be made 
than that of Paul to Agrippa and his fellow 
hearers, in reference to the fulfilment of God's 
promise : *'Why should it be esteemed a thing 

INCREDIBLE WITH YOU THAT GOD SHOULD RAISE 
THE DEAD?" Acts 26: 8. "I BELIEVE IN THE 
RESURRECTION OP THE BODY." 

To me it seems as of all things the most hkely 
to happen, that when Israel comes to his own in 

in subjection thej habitabi^e; karth (or **the world of 
human habitations " ) The onk that is to be;, whereof we 
(Christians) speak.'* See page 8. Noah's Deluge did 
not obliterate from the earth's surface the two rivers Eu- 
phrates and Tigris, which were in the Paradise of Adam 
and Kve ; they remain until this day ; and we have no rea- 
son to suppose that the coming Deluge of fire, which shall 
wipe out ungodliness from under heaven^ will obliterate 
Palestine from the map of the new world ** wherein dwelleth 
righteousness." Our English Version makes Peter to say, 
* * the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned 
UP." The reader may esteem it ** a distinction without a 
difference," but what Peter did really write was **burne;d 
DOWN." In English, ** burned up" means obliteration, 
total destruction : while * * burned down ' * suggests the idea 
of being rebuilt. And so, if Bethlehem and Jerusalem are 
burned DOvi^N in that day, they will be rebuilt, to stand, 
this time, forever, as Jer. 31: 40 says expressly of Jeru- 
salem. 



144 THE BUKIED NATION'S 

this spiritual and supernatural way, he who was 
once *'the Babe of Bethlehem" will not forget 
the place where he was born in a stable and 
cradled in a manger; but will choose as his 
special residence the land of his nativity, and 
make Jerusalem, the City where he was crucified, 
the Metropolis of his universal earthly dominion, 
and reign forever in the midst of his redeemed 
and glorified people ; for '^ of his Kingdom there 
SHALL BE NO END." Some of my readers may 
need to be reminded, as many do, that Christ on 
his Father's throne, is as truly man as when he 
dwelt on earth, and will continue so to be forever. 
The soundest theology declares that in him '* two 
whole, perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead 
and the manhood, are inseparably joined together 
in one person^ without conversion, composition or 
confusion^^ (Conf. of Faith, Ch. 8, Sec. 2); and he 
'^so was and continues to be both God and man in 
two distinct natures and one person forever^ 
Shorter Catechism, Q. 21. He will, therefore, be 
as competent to reign forever on earth, on his 
own throne, as he now is to rule in heaven, on 
his Father's throne. 

I am in no remote or possible sense a "juda- 
IZER." In this matter *Hhe Jew" has no pre- 
eminence or distinction, as Paul over and over 
asserts and affirms ; but the Jew, as a human 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 145 

being, niust have a home and a land of his own, 
as a hundred Scriptures declare; and as '^The 
King's Court" will be, w^e suppose, in what was 
once ^'Jewsland," the promises and predictions 
as to Jerusalem and Mount Zion, may yet be ful- 
filled to the letter, without bestowing on the Jew 
any greater distinction or special privilege than 
does residence in '^The District of Columbia" 
confer on the American citizen who has his home 
in or near the capital city of the American Repub- 
Uc. 

To this purpose then may be literally read the 
following promises: "Then the moon shall be 
confounded, and the sun be ashamed, when the 
Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in 
Jerusalem^ and before his ancients gloriously.^^ 
Isa. 24: 23. "In his days shall the righteous 
flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the 
moon endureth." "His enemies shall lick the 
dust." "His name shall endure forever: his 
name shall be continued as long as the sun : and 
men shall be blessed in him : all nations shall 
CALL HIM BLESSED." Ps. 73. " Behold the days 
come, saith the Lord, that the city shall be 
BUILT TO THE LoRD, from the tower of Hananel 
unto the gate of the corner. And the measuring 
line shall yet go forth straight onward unto the 
hill of Gareb, and shall turn about unto Goah. 



146 THE BURIED NATIONS 

And the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of 
the ashes, and all the fields unto the brook 
Kidron, unto the tower of the horse gate toward 
the east, shall be holy unto the Lord: it 

SHALL NOT BE PLUCKED UP NOR THROWN DOWN, 

ANY MORE FOREVER." Jer. 31: 38-40. *' And the 

NAME OF THE CITY FROM THAT DAY SHALL BE : 

Jehovah-Shammah " (=*'The Lord is there." 
Ezek. 47: 35. 



APPENDIX. 

Facts and Statistics on the Infant Dead. 

On page 45 I said that "as regards the relative numbers 
of the Infant Dead, we have no way of forming an accu- 
rate opinion." And so the reader has found it to be, in 
the varying proportions I myself have successively assumed, 
settling down finally on two-thirds of Adam's race, as 
a credible and reasonable proportion of mankind, who 
in the 6,000 years of this world's sad past have filled infant 
graves. This proportion seemed at last to be safest, 
though the relative proportions have, I think, sometimes 
greatly exceeded that. When the death-rate of infant chil- 
dren varies so widely in different countries of our own 
day and generation, ranging upwards from utter savagery 
and paganism to the highest forms of Christian civiliza- 
tion, how incompetent must we be (who may well say with 
the Psalmist: ''He hath not dealt so with any nation*') to 
form a correct estimate of the deplorable condition of 
other peoples and other ages, who all come within the 
scope of our present inquiry. Vital statistics are essen- 
tially a modern branch of knowledge, and are of a merely 
proximate value and correctness among the most advanced 
nations of the present; how much mor-^ so among the 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 147 

peoples of to-day who do not pretend to keep them? How 
incomparably more so, when we inquire about the nations, 
and peoples, and ages of the past, on whbm even the con- 
ception of the thing had never dawned? And when such 
great lights of antiquity as Lycurgus and Plato, and Aris- 
totle, and Pliny the elder palliated, excused, defended, and 
even legislated for the regulation of infanticide, as being 
wise and necessary, who in former times would care to 
keep account of the natural deaths of the little ones, in 
"the dark places of the earth, which are full of the habi- 
tations of cruelty?'* The account is correctly kept only in 
heaven; where doubtless a guileless babe is worth more 
than a bad man. As the study is interesting in itself, 
and has an important bearing on the subject-matter of my 
book, I make no excuses for the length of the Appendix. 

Dr. Wm. H. Guilfoy, Registrar of the Department of 
Health of the City of New York, has kindly furnished me, 
at my request (when this volume was nearly all in type), 
the following facts and figures in reference to Infant 
Mortality in the City of Greater New York, from which, 
with his permission, I present these facts in reference 
thereto, — ^the city whose people are the best fed, best clothed, 
best housed, best cared for in times of need, with best 
medical attendance, including hospitals, nurses, relief asso- 
ciations, orphanages, children's homes, public charities, and 
private beneficences, including free ice in hot weather, 
Pasteurized milk for sick babies, summer outings, etc., of 
all the great capitals of Europe and America, and which is 
the commercial capital of the most prosperous, most 
favored and most Christian land under heaven. He says 
in his letter to me of September 23, 1910: 

"The number of deaths in the City of New York, of 
children under the age of one (1) year, was 15,977, out 
of a total of 74,195, of all ages. [About 1 in 4J^.] 

"The number of children under three (3) years of age 
was 22,654 during the same year. [About 1 in 3J4.] 



148 THE BURIED NATIONS 

"In regard to infant mortality based upon the num- 
ber of births reported during the same year, the figures 
for the City of New York were 128 per 1,000. [About 1 
in 8.] 

"The infant mortality in the City of London is lower 
than the New York figures I have just quoted. The 
highest infant mortality that I know of is to be found 
in the City of Moscow: about 320 of their 1,000 children 
born die in a year. [Nearly one-third.] 

"The lowest mortality is to be found in some of the 
cities of the Australian Continent: in which the infant 
mortality rate is given as 85 to 90 per 1,000 births. [Say 
1 in 11.] 

"In New York City during 1909 there were 24,521 deaths 
of children under five (5) years of age, out of a total of 
74,105 deaths of all ages. 

"According to these figures you will see that the mor- 
tality under the age of five (5) is about one-third of the 
total mortality of the year. [About the same proportion 
as in Moscow in one year.] 

"In the registration area of the United States (consti- 
tuting statistics from one-half of the entire country), dur- 
ing the year 1908 there were 198,865 deaths of children 
tinder five (5) years of age, out of a total of 691,574 at 
all ages. [About 1 in 3J^.] 

"Hoping these figures will be of service to you, I remain, 
"Yours respectfully, 

"Wm. h. Guilfoy. m.d;* 

From this statement it is seen that in Australia (the 
population being for the most part new, young and 
healthy), the death-rate of children in their £rst year is 
about one in eleven; in Greater New York about one in 
eight; in Moscow, one in three. 

The special Albany correspondent of the New York 
Times, under date of October 6, 1910, says that "New 
York City, according to the monthly bulletins issued by 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 149 

the State Board of Health, made a net gain in native 
population, during August, of 5,157, its births numbering 
11,207, and its deaths 6,050." "The total births of the 
month, for the entire State was 18,049, showing a net 
gain in native population in the State of 6,051/' As no 
mention is made of the deaths of children, this does not 
help us, except as showing a healthy normal growth of 
population. 

Mulhall, in his Dictionary of Statistics (Fourth Edition, 
revised to November, 1898), remarks, on page 816, that 
"There is no increase in France, the deaths in the last 
five years having equaled the births." In Geneva (page 
187) he says that among natives there were 101 deaths to 
100 births; among foreigners, 156 births to 100 deaths. He 
quotes Ladame as giving the following rate of mortality 
for Geneva (which is no longer the City of Calvin) : "Of 
1,000 born, there die in 12 months 180 legitimate and 280 
illegitimate." In the matter of illegitimate births, the 
countries of Continental Europe, by MulhalFs showing, 
are in an incomparably worse condition than England and 
our Protestant America; which doubtless accounts in part 
for the excessively large infant mortality he reports in 
some of them. This is not an inquiry into the morals of 
the nations, but their infant deaths; yet, since the two 
are intimately related, and as in many cases the author 
distinguishes between the two classes, I can only give the 
numbers as he sets them down; and since foundling hos- 
pitals are a necessary concomitant of widespread illegiti- 
macy, he gives the two in combination; saying that the 
death-rate of illegitimates is very much higher than that 
of children born of lawful marriage; and of the found- 
lings he says that in Marseilles 38 per cent, of them die 
the first year; 40 per cent, in St. Petersburg; 42 per cent, 
in Lyons, and 57 per cent, in Paris. On page 178 he says 
that according to the archives of 1881, of 1,000 born, 174 
legitimate children die under one year in Rome, and 329 



150 THE BURIED NATIONS 

illegitimates. In Berlin, 133 die of the former class, and 
453 of the latter. In Saxony, 256 of the former class die 
in twelve months, and 353 of the latter; in Dresden, the 
capital of Saxony, 250 of the former class, and 705 of the 
latter. Page 186. The totals he does not give. All this 
sets before us one more of the tremendous assets which 
stand to the credit of the Bible-loving and Bible-reading 
lands on either side of the Sea. 

After a great many hours laboriously spent at the Public 
Library in patient and repeated scrutiny of Mulhairs 25 
or 30 pages of birth and mortuary statistics, I gather from 
them, and from several leading Encyclopedias, these addi- 
tional facts and figures, which I select and publish as most 
relevant to our present inquiry, without any attempt at 
systematic arrangement : 

On page 177 (for 1876-1880) he gives this annual death- 
rate, per 1,000 births; England, 145; France, 163; Prussia, 
205; Bavaria, 298; Wurtemburg, 302; Austria, 249; Italy, 
209; Sweden, 126; Russia, in different Departments, from 
360 to 446 in the first year; Prague, per 1,000 births, 497 
in the first year, and 85 in the next three, or 582 under 
five years; Austria, under five years, 385. Here, crossing 
the Mediterranean Sea into French and Spanish Algeria, 
he gives 500 deaths out of 1,000 births, the first year, as 
the death-rate among the Mohammedans; the rate among 
French, Spanish and Germans being about half as much. 

Passing again to Russia, he says, p. 188, that "of 1,000 
boys born, 254 die yearly, and of girls, 231." "At Niji 
Novgorod, the infant mortality is 360, and in the govern- 
ment of Perm, 446, per 1,000 births.'* 

Another presentation he gives of the number of deaths 
out of 1,000 births, under six years of age, which varies 
all the way from 122 in Norway, and 163 in Ireland, up 
to 574 in Russia. But enough has been said to establish 
the fact that the normal rate of infant mortality is three, 
four or even five times larger in some European countries 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 151 

than in others; and upon this I remark, that if this occurs 
in European countries, in the 19th century, what shall we 
say about the barbarous and semi-civilized lands of to-day, 
and of the known and unknown ages of the past, through 
five or six thousand years of pagan darkness? What 
about the infant mortality of the 150 or 200 millions of the 
Mohammedan world of which we have had one sample in 
Algeria? What about the 400 millions of pagan China, 
worse off by far than the Mohammedans? What about the 
150 to 175 millions of Darkest Africa? to say nothing of 
the Islands of the Sea. Matters are as bad or worse, in 
this respect, in South America and Mexico, than in Con- 
tinental Europe ; but we have no statistics for them, except 
in a few of the larger cities. 

Yet these all are supposed to represent the normal 
death-rate, from natural and accidental causes; and as 
yet we have made no reference to war, famine, pestilence, 
or the yet more dreadful "Plague," or "Black Death," which 
in the 6th century devastated the whole Roman Empire ; 
and in the 14th, swept away 25 millions, or the fourth 
part, of Europe ; and about 1663 carried off one-half of the 
population of London ; and some other places it wiped out 
completely; in all which public calamities, babes and little 
children are always the heaviest sufferers. 

Infanticide and Foundling Hospitals* 

But infanticide is something special, that makes no 
showing in the mortuary statistics of Christian lands, being 
there regarded as a crime punishable by law, and not 
counted in "death-rates.'* It is therefore to be added to 
the statistics already given; for once on heathen ground, 
we have to reckon with it at every step, as one of the most 
prolific sources of infant mortality, reaching far back 
into the fabulous ages of the most ancient races, peoples 
and nations. Lycurgus and the wise men of Greece not 
merely condoned for the crime, but legislated for its proper 



152 THE BURIED NATIONS 



regulation, as a positive check on over-population. On 
this point Ridpath's Standard American Encyclopedia 
(Article Infanticide) says : "The practice was common in 
ancient times, and now prevails among many barbarous 
nations. It prevailed in Greece and Rome, and (such is 
the force of custom) found defenders in Plato and Aris- 
totle! In Sparta, we are informed, the law directed that 
when a child was born, the father was to carry it to an 
appointed place, to be inspected by the elders of the 
community. If they perceived that its limbs were straight 
and it looked wholesome, they returned it to the parents 
to be educated; otherwise it was thrown into a deep cav- 
ern at the foot of Mount Taygetus. Among the Norse, 
the child's life always hung in the balance till the father 
handed it to the nurse to be reared; if he disapproved of 
its living, it was exposed to die by wild beasts or the 
weather. In modern times the practice is cruelly common 
among certain peoples. Child murder prevails to a great 
extent throughout the whole of the South Sea Islands. 
Among the Fijians it is a system. Among the Hindus 
the practice of destroying children, especially females, pre- 
vailed frightfully till it was checked in the time of the 
Marquis of Wellesley's rule. The Rajpoots, it is said, 
destroy all female children but the first-born. The Mo- 
hammedans were inclined to the same practice. In New 
Holland the women think nothing of destroying the in- 
fant. In China infanticide is supposed to be common, 
the chief cause being, it is said, the right of periodically 
repudiating their wives, which is possessed by Chinamen." 

The Encyclopedia Britannica assigns the scarcity of food 
as a chief cause; operating as "a positive check upon 
population, the reckless propagation of children far out- 
running the means of subsistence which the energy of 
the parents can provide"; and the females were, and are, 
mostly killed, because least able to provide for thmselves. 

When I went to Bogota, Colombia (then called New 



OP THE INFANT DEAD. 153 



Granada), in 1856, I could hire a man at any time in the 
street, ready to work for 15 cents a day, and he "find,*' or 
provide for, himself. How many children could he afford 
to *'raise'' in a climate where winter clothing is worn all 
the year round? I would not remotely suggest that in- 
fanticide is any more common there than in other nomi- 
nally Christian countries; I never heard of it while there, 
though scarcity of food both there and in Mexico greatly 
retards the increase of population. But how many could 
a Hindu "pariah," or a Chinese "coolie," raise on the half, 
or the third, or the fourth of that daily wage ? It must not 
be supposed that parental affection would be a sufficient 
restraint against the crime of infanticide in pagan lands; 
for, as is well known, the fires of parental affection burn 
low in the savage and pagan breast ; and when the Apostle 
enumerated among the crying sins of the Roman world, 
the being "without natural affection,'' he no doubt 
referred first of all to this; which was dreadfully preva- 
lent there at that very time, not merely among the very 
poor, but among all classes; and Roman law did not pre- 
vent the killing of babies, when it gave the power of life 
and death over all his children into the father's hands. 
When Pharaoh, by his cruel edict compelled the Israelites 
to "cast out their young children to the end that they 
might not live" (Acts 7: 19), he simply required them 
to do by wholesale, what from time immemorial was com- 
mon usage, one by one, among almost all the heathen 
peoples about them. We do not read in the Bible of in- 
fanticide as practiced by the ancient Hebrews, in their 
frequent apostacies from the God of their fathers, except 
in the way of offering their infants in sacrifice to the 
gods of Canaan; when> instead of making a heart-rending 
sacrifice (as Christian people naturally suppose) to their 
bestial gods and goddesses, they probably made a merit 
of the common sin of infanticide, by disposing of their 
superfluous infants, without any elaborate or costly cere- 



154 THE BURIED NATIONS 



monial, in this way: for it is named among the common 
sins of the people : 

"Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters 
unto devils, 

and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons 
and daughters, 

whom they sacrificed unto the gods of Canaan; 

and the land was polluted with blood." 

Ps. 106: 37, 38. 
Both infanticide and child "exposure" were very com- 
mon under* the later Roman Empire ; and as neither Roman 
law, nor social custom forbade the one or the other, the 
evil grew with the increase of luxury and extravagance, 
on the one hand, and of poverty and hardship on the 
other, together with the ever-diminishing sense of moral 
and religious obligation. To quench the spark of infant 
life at birth was a very simple matter; but where timidity 
or natural sensibility forbade the act, it was an easy mat- 
ter to "expose" the new born babe, particularly in some 
place of concourse, where it might be seen and cared for 
by somebody, either for pity or cupidity; for Roman law 
long permitted the finder to claim it as his personal prop- 
erty, for any use he pleased ; or else leave it to beasts 
or birds of prey. 

"Quintilian and Seneca (says the Encyclopedia Brit- 
annica) bear witness to the frightful mortality among 
children so exposed." And if this in Rome, then how 
about the provinces of the vast pagan empire? Bingham, 
in his Ecclesiastical Antiquities, quotes Tertulian, in the 
3rd century, as retorting thus upon their heathen perse- 
cutors, who accused them of using infants' blood in the 
celebration of their worship: "You accuse us of murder- 
ing infants ; but let me turn on your people, and appeal 
to their consciences, and then how many may I find among 
those who stand about us, and thirst for Christian blood, 
nay, among those just and severe judges that condemn 



OF THE INFANT DEAD. 155 



us, who kill their own children as soon as they are horn, 
or else expose them to sold, and famine, and dogsT 
"The same charge is brought against them by Mincius 
Felix^ that they exposed their children, as soon as they 
were born, to wild beasts and birds of prey." Bingham's 
Eccl. Antiq., Book XVI, chap. 10, sec. 11. 

This old pagan usage continued down to the "conver- 
sion" of the pagan empire to Christianity by imperial 
edict, and as most of the pagans were not "converted" 
except in name, they brought in with them into the 
"Christian Empire" this, in common with their old vices 
and crimes; and in spite of Church censures and ineffect- 
ual imperial edicts, the evil continued as before, and took 
deeper root; except that as infanticide decreased, the 
"exposure" of infants greatly increased, and it became 
common custom to leave the little ones abandoned at the 
church door for the church to take care of, or anybody 
else. Then, with the continued increase of the evil, a 
receptacle was placed at the church door to receive the 
little ones thus "cast out"; whose numbers so increased, 
that in the Middle Ages a regular traffic was established 
in these foundling babies, and they were sold to all comers, 
says the Encyclopedia, "at a fixed price of 20 sous each," 
ahout 20 cents. In the 17th century, St. Francis de Paul 
introduced great and salutary reforms in the system, which 
had long become intolerable; yet, as was to be expected, 
the increasing facilities for disposing of the unwelcome 
fruit of sensual indulgence, without cleansing the fountain, 
have powerfully contributed to promote the evil in all the 
lands of Continental Europe that tolerate or encourage 
the itistitution ; till at the close of the 19th century, as 
stated by Chambers* Encyclopedia, "on an average about 
12,506 foundlings pass through the hands of the authori- 
ties of the Paris Hospital annually," and "the provincial 
statistics show an average number of 36,000 annually un- 
der the surveillance of the authorities.'* From the En- 



156 THE BURIED NATIONS 

cyclopedia Britannica I take the following with reference 
to Austria: "It is said that there are in the Empire 35 
foundling hospitals, receiving annually 120,000 children." 
This statement will appear the less incredible when con- 
fronted with that of the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, in his 
Evenings with the Romanists (based on the official rec- 
ords), that in the latter half of the 19th century the 
illegitimate births in Vienna amounted to 51 per cent; 
in Klagenfort to 56 per cent. ; and in Gratz, to 65 per cent. 
The same author gives official statistics to show that 
50 years ago, in the Ecclesiastical City of Rome, then com- 
pletely under the papal government and control, the aver- 
age of births for ten years was 4,373, out of which number 
3,120 were sent yearly to the foundling asylums! 

Appalling as all this is, it is less so than the death-rate 
of these poor creatures, which, as given above, was, accord- 
ing to Mulhall, 38 per cent, in Marseilles, in the first year ; 
40 per cent, in St. Petersburg; 42 per cent, in Lyons, and 
67 per cent, in Paris. Chambers^ Encyclopedia says : 'The 
asylums of Russia have for many years lost 50 and 60 
per cent, of the infants annually sent to them; in Vienna 
it rose as high as 75 per cent, and it stood at as high a 
figure in France, Italy and Portugal." The Encyclopedia 
Britannica says that in the year 1835 the Foundling Hos- 
pital in Dublin, Ireland, which had received from 1,500 
to 2,000 foundlings annually, was closed on account of 
the great mortality prevailing there, which amounted to 
four out of £ve (or 80 per cent.). Prior to the great work 
of St. Vincent de Paul, on behalf of these unfortunates in 
the 17th century, the same authority says that "amongst 
these children the mortality averaged 90 per cent!" No 
wonder that, as stated by the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
foundling hospitals are forbidden by law in Germany ! and 
in Protestant countries generally they have no existence, 
except as imported from abroad in a few large cities where 
the foreign population is large. 



OF THE INANT DEAD. 157 

In this country, instead of building foundling hospitals, 
which are always a public menace to social morality, it 
is usual to send the unfortunate babes, if in needy cir- 
cumstances, to the Poor House, or assess on the putative 
father an annual tax for their support, that they may not 
become a burden on the public. 

Evidence has now been presented, sufficient, I think, to 
show that, as far as a point of the kind can be set forth 
in numerals (and yet without the use of numerals no 
definite idea of it can be gained or expressed), two-thirds, 
or even three-fourths of Adam's race have died in infancy, 
or early childhood. If the reader objects to any definite 
statement of proportions, he will, perhaps find the following 
indefinite statement still more impressive: 

Ever since "by one man sin entered into the world, and 
death by sin" (Rom. 5:12), "sons and daughters" (as 
stated in Gen. 5: 3-27), in unbroken and unfailing succes- 
sion have been born to the Sinner Adam, "in his own 
image and likeness." And as the Antediluvian sinners were 
not distinguished for chastity, sobriety, self-restraint or a 
well regulated life, we have no reason to suppose that 
the natural increase of children was slow. We have, on 
page 2, presented an estimate to show that a steady doub- 
ling of the race of Adam and Eve every 25 years, or four 
times in a century, would have been sufficient in 1,000 
years to stock 600 worlds like ours; what then must have 
been the prodigal waste of infant life in those days, that 
the earth was not soon over-populated? Instead of patient 
industry and honest toil, the world was soon "filled with 
violence," and corruption and all manner of wickedness; 
but for all that, ''sons and daughters" would come ; whether 
they lived or died, they kept on being born. In spite of 
war, and violence, and tumult, famine, pestilence, hardship, 
poverty, disease and woes innumerable, whatever failed, 
the children would not fail to come. If then, in our own 
times, 320 infants out of 1,000 born die in the city of 



158 THE INFANT DEAD. 

Moscow in their first year; if of 1,000 born in the city of 
Prague 480 die under one year of age ; if in Mohammedan 
Algeria 500 out of 1,000 die under twelve months, what 
must have been the annual death-rate of babies in the 
years before the Flood; when people were, of course, for 
the most part naked savages, who mated and bred like 
animals? See Gen. 6:2: in Hebrew, "wives" and women 
are the same word. Let me repeat the question: If 
a single pair of human beings doubling their numbers every 
25 years would have stocked 600 worlds like ours 
in 1,000 years, what must have been the prodigious, 
the incalculably prodigal waste of infant life, that 
after the lapse of 6,000 years the sum total of the 
"sons and daughters" of our first father Adam do not 
exceed 1,500 millions, in a half-peopled world? And let 
it not be forgotten that in the days when war was every 
man's trade, as in Central Africa it is to-day, in all 
warfare it was the established usage that of the vanquished, 
the men were put the sword, the women and children were 
carried off into slavery, and the babes and sucklings, who 
served only as a burden and a hindrance, had their brains 
dashed out against the trees or the stones. Infant life 
was of the least possible account in those ancient times, 
and among barbarous peoples it still is till this day; but 
it is of these little ones that Jesus has said : "Of such 
is the kingdom of God!" 



The author no^vr requests that you "Mrill read liis 
book a second tinte* ior a better understanding of it* 



JUN 22 19" 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



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